Laying Tracks...Like a PRO

Hey all, Andy here. Seeing as I finished up the floor I’ll be finishing up the floor posts. Convenient.


So after waking up nice and early on a Saturday morning, I decided to grab another can of Kilz and go over the half of the room with the cat smell a few more times. I figured more coats couldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t slow me down waiting for it to dry as I was planning on starting on the otherside anyhow. Here’s a picture with the floor all clear and primed.

Just the beginning...

I next had to plan out what the angle I’d be laying the floors, seeing as we had the idea of doing them diagonally. I was originally planning on just doing it 45° from the walls, which seemed to be the standard, but I quickly noticed that the angle of the entryway from the front door area was more like 55°. Being the gigantic nerdy engineer I am, I decided to make a quick AutoCAD sketchof the two possible layouts (45 vs 55) and send them to Amanda for approval.(Entryway is the top left corner area)

45 Degree Layout

55 Degree Layout

We quickly decided that 55 would be better, even though it meant it would be a lot harder for me to do. 45 degree layout would require me to cut everything at 45 degrees; I’d just have to figure out which direction I needed. 55 degree layout means I’d have to do 55 or 35 degree cuts and in two different directions, so I’d have to be extra careful in figuring out which way to cut each board.

So next I grabbed the staple gun and went to work laying out the underlayment. We got simple foam underlayment to help with noise reduction. Nothing fancy but it'll still get the job done and it won't echo downstairs in the basement. I stapled down half of the room while the other half was still drying from the primer.

Underlayment down, ready for first board

First board was actually pretty easy to nail down. I know we wanted to keep the angle of the entryway throughout the floor (“so it flowed”) so I started there. I centered the plank on the entryway and nailed it down. BEHOLD!!

One down, a "plethora" to go...

Now that I had my first piece down, laying the rest of the boards should “theoretically be easy”. I actually said that… out loud…. I’d just have to keep them snug up against each other and have the seams set at randomlocations so it looks all professional and such. Never mind that I had to do this 224 more times. That part I stashed away in the “do not want” area of my brain.

Anywho, I decided to finish up the corner nearest the first plank so I could just start cruising through the rest of the room. What I didn't think of, however, was the fact that laying the planks in that direction would cause me to be unable to use the floor nailer. Because the floor nailer shootsnails though the “toe” of the board where the tongue is, you can really only use the nailer when you’re laying boards in one direction. However, because I started at the entryway I’d have to go “backwards” to the corner. So for all of these boards I just drilled pilot holes and top nailed these boards with finishing nails. After I was done I’d have to go back and fill the holes with putty, but shouldn’t be that big of a deal. This method, however took a LONG time.

Corner dun. Nailer getting lonely, wants hugs

It was already nearing midday and with only the corner done I needed to start layingdown rows and chug right along. Here’s what I learned about laying hardwoodfloors diagonally: you have to do a TON of cutting boards to fit. And you're going to screw up measurements. And you’re going to cut boards the wrong direction. And you’re going to cut boards with the wrong angle. And you're going to be dripping with sweat. And you’re going to be cursing. And your back will be cursing from using the nailer. And you’re going to be taking “sanitybreaks” with the pups to make sure you don’t lose your mind.


But regardless of all that, I got about half of the frontroom done by the end of the day. That included the corner where I had to topnail all of the boards and the one vent in the room, which slowed down production considerably.

End of Day 1

I figured I should be able to get the rest of it done in one more day. However, because Amanda’s family reunion was the next day I’d have to wait till Monday to get it done. My aching back was very appreciative of the break.

Next post: Into The Hallway And Out Of My Mind

Laying our own floors: Prepping

Once we picked the floors, we had to wait a few weeks until Andy would be home. He decided he wanted to do the floors on a day I worked since I wouldn't be of much help in the actual laying process. We picked a weekend I worked on a Saturday so that we could do the prep on Friday. Earlier in the week we went and picked up the floors and brought them home so that the wood could adjust to the temperature and moisture level in the house. So our front hall looked like this:

 

On Friday we took to prepping the floors, which was surprisingly easy. Andy took all the baseboards off in the front room and down the hall, he said this was kind of a pain because of the way the installers had nailed it but it went quick. Here's a picture of the floors without baseboards:

Once the baseboards were off it was time to roll the carpet and padding up and cart it away:

That was really easy, very heavy, but easy. Especially since there are still construction dumpsters on our street. Shh, don't tell. Voila, no carpet:

Now the next part was probably the most difficult, we had to take all the carpet strips that held the carpet in place out and also pull up any staples or nails in the sub floor. It was more tedious than hard and took the most time. I pulled the staples while Andy removed the transitions. Once all that was done we had to sweep up all the debris, which was not that pleasant, I found some things under the padding I'm not pleased about, like dead insects and some dirt clods from the construction aspect. The very last thing that had to be done was sanding the floor and priming it so our naughty kitty couldn't find the spot she had peed.

Sorry for the blurry picture, I was tired by this point.

We used Kilz 2 on the floor, which we had read would cover the area where the cat missed her litter box and keep her from smelling it. That had to dry for a few hours and at this point it was around 9:30 so we decided to give it up for the night and Andy would continue on in the morning.

Andy will be posting about the next steps because he was the one doing them, so it may be a few days before that post goes up.

 

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Laying our own floors: The what and the why.

We decided, pretty much as soon as we moved in, that we were going to slowly replace all the flooring in the house. We opted for the most basic carpet in most of the house, minus the kitchen and master bath, because it was free and the upgraded options didn't do a whole lot for us. We figured that as the carpet wore we would be able to just replace it with better options. Well that happened a lot sooner than we imagined it would in the front room, due to a trouble making kitty and the fact that our builder used crap carpet and installers. This sped up the process a bit and we had to decide on a flooring type. We landed on hardwood/bamboo because the front room is rarely used and we figured it might be a formal dining room down the line. So we took on the task of finding a color/type. This took way longer than expected. We went to about 5 different stores and brought home dozens of samples. Nothing looked great with the purple paint in the front room and if it did it turned out to be too expensive. Finally after weeks (yes weeks!) of deliberation, we decided it was easier to paint and pick a floor that we loved and fit our budget. We landed on this:

Sorry about the flash glare!

This is Home Legend hand-scraped bamboo in cafe, which can be found at Home Depot. We loved the color, the hand-scraped detail, and it passed the durability test (we hit it with a high heel multiple times, didn't leave a mark). Once we picked it we had to pick a time to lay the floor. It was going to be a few weeks at the time because Andy was going to be gone. Next post, I'll talk about prepping the floors.

 

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