Monday, September 24, 2007

Wood Floors: Part 1

Two weekends ago we started the process of laying hardwood floors. We tackled both bedrooms and part of the hallway. We won't finish the rest until after we receive and put in our patio door. It should be here in a few more weeks. I came to the conclusion that I am NOT a fan of carpet after spending hours pulling up carpet nail strips. They suck! The floors look great. We still need to finish the trim and reattach it, but what a difference already.
Here's the stack of flooring.

Jim started to rip up the carpet in our guest room and we found a very special surprise underneath . . . .

Glitter tile flooring! Wow! It's almost too pretty to cover up again. Just kidding. Pretty sweet, though.

Ahh, the carpet nail strips. They look so easy to just pull right up. Oh, so not the case . . .

The chisel and hammer going to work on those nail strips. Some did come up pretty easily, while others (like this one) disintegrated into split pieces of wood. Not fun.

Next step was laying the tar paper. Not a must, but the manufacturer recommended it for some noise reduction and moisture control. It smelled bad.

Wooo hooo! Look at those floors going down so pretty! The color is really fantastic. There's lots of variation.

Yay! Guest room done (almost, except for the trim). My grandma sent the quilt on the bed. It looks so cozy :) Come visit!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks fantastic! You guys make it look so easy... Did you have to pull up the glitter tile too or did you just "pave" right over it??? You guys inspire me!

Anonymous said...

The wood floor looks beautiful, as does the quilt. Sara, did your grandmother make the quilt? I'm really looking forward to our visit next month.

Anonymous said...

My grandma did make the quilt, which really makes it special. Can't wait for your visit!

S

Anonymous said...

Hi Jen. I'm glad we make it look easy, but it sure wasn't. Whew! We were both sore for the next few days, but we're glad to have at least part of it finished. We didn't pull up the glitter tile. Jim said it is asbestos tile, so pulling it up would have been semi-dangerous and not worth the hassle. It was not problem to lay the flooring over top of it. We just put the paper down as a buffer.

Jim said...

i was not that sore

Anonymous said...

Oh, sorry, I forgot that men don't get sore.

Anonymous said...

For the record, I've seen jim sore...

Jim said...

yeah, well i've seen av unconscious

Anonymous said...

Nice work guys. Looks great.

JZ said...

I'm a bit jealous of your relationship with the precious carpet tack strip...I have quite an intimate relationship with the tack strip as I spend way too many hours on hands and knees pleading with the bastards to give up already as carpet is so 90's! And don't you wish somebody would invent some hip hydrolics to get our asses up and down off our knees doing that flooring? dang... The floors look great guys...saweet!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.