After two days of working on pulling up the carpet and preparing the base molding and door jambs for the beautiful wood floors, we were aching. We both really looked like 90 year olds walking around the house!!
You can see what we did here.
The incentive of beautiful wood floors pushed us to continue the work……
DAY #3
This was the most exciting and most difficult day so far! The first step was to lay down the underlayment which will deaden sound and will act as a moisture barrier. Then, right or wrong, we started in the most difficult place to lay our wood floors. We’ve done a lot of reading and watching youtubes and reading some more. We learned that it was important to lay down the first row of flooring, check with a chalk line for straightness before continuing.
The flooring that we are laying has a click and lock system and it’s designed to lay from left to right.
Most of the hallway is made up of straight lines except in front of Daughter #1’s bedroom which is where we began. All the cuts would be at an angle.
I was amazed at how much patience the LOML had with each piece as he would cut a piece, try it in its place, go back and shave a little bit more off and on and on and on.
He had a great system in the nearby bathroom with a bucket, a board, and a jigsaw.
After working on the floors ALL day, we only finished the one little triangular area in front of Daughter #1’s room. WOW! Was that tough!!
DAY #4
After finishing the most difficult section of the flooring the day before, every muscle hurt. We started laying the long hallway with scattered short (24″) and long boards (48″).
It’s not as easy as it sounds. In the directions for laying the flooring, there are a few rules to follow. Boards should be no shorter than 10″. If they are shorter than 10″, they need to be glued into place. Don’t lay the boards in a stairstep, or H pattern.
As we got closer to the stair railings, we needed to cut out a space under the sill for the flooring to fit under. We rented a door jamb saw and then cleaned it up with the oscillating tool. Because there’s no place to put molding to hold the flooring down, the sills would do the job of holding them in place.
Along with the flooring, we also had to buy a stair tread for the top stair. Sadly, we’ve had to wait on the arrival of this piece. I believe it’s been ordered three times!! We can’t finish the flooring leading up to the tread until we get it.
I’ll let you know when we can continue. We’re almost done and it feels good!!
Love y’all,
Linda
