November 21, 2011

New Floors Part IV: Installation

If you haven’t already, check out part 1, part 2, and part 3 where I remove the old flooring, bleed from my fingers, put a toilet in the yard, and cut a hole into my house.

Installed flooring?  Yeah.  That’s what’s up. 

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After some intense cleanup, I used my new laser line draw thing to put a line all the way across the house.  The thing is, it’s really important to get this line straight.  So buy the laser.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s a laser and fun to play with.  It freaks the crap out of animals.

The first night, I only got one row of flooring in.  I really really really didn’t want to mess up that first row.  Day two got us a bit further along.

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We are watching New Girl right here.  Dani needs to ensure that Zooey and I don’t run off together.

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Always more to clean when you are doing this.  Chunks of debris under flooring leads to creaks and lumps that will drive you insane the rest of your life.  My dad will vouch for this one.

Installing the floor pieces isn’t what takes the most time.  It’s the “little” stuff that does that.  Like finding just the right piece of flooring for the spot you are in, or trimming the base around door frames and entry ways.

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The vibrating dremel tool was a huge time saver, here. 

At the end of day two, Dani and I did a lot of strolling back and forth on our 45 sq ft of installed floor.  It felt very regal.  We should have spoke with our very practiced high class English accents.  We may have waltzed.  Ok, that’s a lie.  I have no idea how to waltz; it’s been a long time since I was forced to learn during High School PE class. 

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When day 3 came along, I had some reinforcements.  Eric came down from PA to help for a day and we made a lot of progress.   I think the last time Eric showed up here at My Dad’s Shoes is when he fried a turkey and didn’t burn down the house.

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What Eric is doing, here, is using a wrench and a hammer to convince a stray nail that it wants to go the rest of the way into the floor.  We had to do a lot of this.  Being vigilant in finding the nails that stick up just a bit too much will save a lot of frustration when you find bumps in the floor.  So, yes.. progress was made with Eric’s extra set of hands.  But progress does not come without blood in this house.

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Eric stepped on a nail, and I had a Dremel tool nearly take off my finger tip.  But hey, ‘close’ only counts in golf and nuclear warfare, right?


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See that stack of short pieces against the wall?  Now is a good of time as any to say that an odd lot of flooring sucks.  But, given the amount of savings, it’s worth it.  My waste factor was higher, my frustration level was way higher, and I have a lot more seams than I’d like.  I also have a fair number of pieces of flooring installed that taper in width, but I didn’t catch it until it was too late.  But, at 1/3rd the cost, it’s still well worth it.  Buy an extra 5 to 10% waste. 

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Let me just point out to the lady readers that it’s hot when women use a tape measure.   Hot.  Dani still has a number of tricks to keep me from Zooey.  Tool-use is a strong one.

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Speaking of things worth their cost; this is one epic beer.  I wish I had an opportunity to get more of them before they vanished for the season.

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A couple more hours of work after this last shot and we had our new floor completely installed.  This is still no where near the end of this project.  More to come!
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