Well hey there! I’m THRILLED to announce that the great floor install has begun!! Wait -- that should probably be The Great Floor Install. It deserves caps cause I’ve been been waiting for this for a loooong time. (Six weeks and three days. But who’s counting?)
;)
The process started bright and early Tuesday morning – the handymen came to pull up all of the carpet and laminate. But first all of the furniture had to be moved out! Initially we were going to try to move furniture back and forth (from the front of the house to the back) but I’m SO glad we didn’t mess with that. It would have been a total hassle, and I’m not even sure we would have had room for all of the furniture in one place.
By the way – before this I didn’t think we had much furniture. We do. Have much furniture.
While the guys moved furniture and pulled up flooring, I took all of the little stuff – lamps, baskets, knick knacks, pillows -- down to the basement.
Can I get a hollaaaaa for basements? I don’t know what we’d do without ours. Double thump to the chest at it.
After everything was out, the flooring guys got going pretty quick – they started with the front of the house and moved back. I was shocked at how fast the floors went down – it’s just the measuring and cutting that takes time.
By the end of day one, the dining and living room were DONE!:
I am SO IN LOVE!!! Even in the natural color – I. am. giddy.
I cannot even express to you the difference it’s already made in our house! It feels HUGE! I know the whole no furniture thing plays a teensy roll in that, but STILL. :)
They worked their tails off today, and would have gotten all of the floors down, but we had some little problems to work around in the family room and kitchen.
Thousands of them:
See that line of itty bitty staples? When we had the laminate installed years ago, the installers had to put down a layer of plywood to even out the floors. The plywood came up easy – the staples did not.
It seems like there are (pinky to mouth) meeeellions of them.
So the guys have to pound down each and every one before they can install over them – it took hours this morning. Tomorrow they will finish that up and finish the floors!
We were told the whole process would be done by this Friday, and HA! that makes me laugh. ;) It will be next Tuesday at the earliest, unless things go magically fast over the next few days. I’m going to plan for mid-next week and be pleasantly surprised if it’s finished up earlier.
The finished on site process obviously takes much longer than a prefinished or engineered wood would take. With either of those, they would go down and then be done. The version we chose is installed, spots are filled, the floors are sanded, then stained and finally coats of poly are put over all of it.
So a one or two day process for prefinished will be at least five for the finished on site.
There is one BIG reason that we went this route. I know myself. :)
The little crevices in the prefinished flooring would have driven me nutty:
Quite a few of you mentioned this (actually, a TON of you) when I asked about the floors on this post. You all were so helpful!!
Many mentioned how it drives you MAD when you have to vacuum out those little cracks. I know it would put me over the edge. Really. You just have to know what makes you tick. Or itch, in this instance. ;)
I had hoped to do the wider boards – maybe four inches wide. But the contractor and installer both explained that the wider the boards, the more the chance of cupping. Indiana weather isn’t exactly what I’d call stable – we get freezing cold, super hot, insane humidity and major dry spells – all within days of each other sometimes. (You think I kid.)
The extremes in weather are a great recipe for cupping floors. The thinner the width of the board, the less chance of that happening:
Ours are 3 1/4 inch wide I believe? They are also 3/4 inch thick (top to bottom)– so there will be plenty of chances to sand them down and restain in the future – which is another reason for this method. They should (please Lord) last forever.
That’s also the reason we didn’t go with the hand scraped look – we were told those can be hard to sand down and stain because of the texture. I’m not sure if that’s 100 percent true, but it makes sense. They’d have to be sanded down to almost flat if they were going to be restained.
I decided to go basic and what I hope is timeless – flat, crevice-free wood floors. ;) I can already tell little bumps and nicks aren’t going to bother me – scratches yes (I may cry the first time!!), but the rest will give them character. :)
I told myself I wouldn’t work on any projects this week because the house is such a mess – but that lasted all of ten minutes. I just can’t sit around watching – I have to do something!
One of my dirty little secrets was revealed when they moved the furniture out – I had even forgotten about it!:
Ha!! I never painted or finished the molding when I did this project a couple years ago. (I posted a how-to video in this post!) I always meant to go back and do it, but the sofa hasn’t moved in years. ;)
So I’ve been working on that…painting and installing the additional boxes. And then because they finished the floors in the office:
I took that opportunity to finish up the baseboards in there. I’ve been waiting forEVA to do this and I’m SO thrilled!! When I installed the B and B in there, I put the mdf right over the top of the baseboards:
It didn’t really bother me – but I knew when the floors were installed that I could fix this, and I’m SO happy with how it turned out!
One of my lovely readers mentioned that they just installed baseboards right over the top of the whole thing – and I thought that was brilliant.
Because our old baseboards were a bit thinner than the mdf I used on the walls, I used a bunch of paint sticks and nailed them over the old baseboards:
I offered to pay for them, but Paint Guy at Home Depot told me to take what I needed – rock on Paint Guy!!
Doing this prevented the bottom part of the new baseboards from caving in when I nailed them in – does that make sense? Otherwise the bottom part would have been against the old baseboards and the top part would have been sticking out – it gave them an even surface to lay on.
It worked like a charm!:
Sorry for the night pic! I got this done late!
Here’s a before and after to see how looks:
OH MY I am so happy to have this done! After the floors are stained the quarter round will go down, completing the baseboards.
Goodbye shorties – helloooo tall baseboards!
You could easily do this over carpet as well…I plan to. :)
So, that’s the update on our new floors – it’s not the easiest route but I think it will be the best one for us. So far I’m dealing pretty well with the mess. I’m just so excited about everything I don’t even care!
I won’t have any reveals to show off till next week -- I’ll talk more about our stain color then. (Cause I’m still deciding!)
So…can you see the potential? I think it’s going to be gorgeous!!
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