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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Adventures in Wood Flooring Installation Part Two

So the day for installation of wood has arrived - or so I thought.  Day ONE of the wood floor install had arrived.  We were getting 660 square feet of wood flooring.  One master bedroom, two master walk in closets and one family room.  Now we were told about floor prep, but I was so naive.  I knew people installed wood flooring themselves. I had been convinced that we could have done it ourselves.

But guess what?  I WAS WRONG.  Even though I had read about the importance of floor leveling and read stories about floors have high spots and low spots, for some reason I believed MY floor was level.  IT WAS NOT.

Here's the status at the end of Day One of the install.

My dining room still contains TWO computer desks.




My breakfast room still contains one half of the contents of the family room.  The other family room furniture and the breakfast room table and chairs are in our garage.



It didn't seem fair or realistic to show you only photos of "The Good".

At the end of Day One, the leveling compound was drying in the master bedroom.


The grinding was complete, after a two hour delay when the wiring burned up in the grinder and the leveling compound was drying in the family room.


The only wood that was installed was in our closets.  Look at that wood and the transition to the bathroom tile!



So the actual WOOD installation project will be going full steam on Day Two. If you are planning to install a wood floor allow $1.50 per square foot for leveling prior to the installation of wood. Don't ask me how I know, just take my word for it and be pleasantly surprised it you don't need much leveling.

Tune in tomorrow for Day Three of the Adventure!

Laura


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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Adventures in Wood Flooring Installation Part One

I'm calling this Part One, even though I blogged before about the wood flooring project here and we've been in project mode for more than two weeks.  But now, we are down to the week of serious "let's get this business done."  So Part One of this three part series on the flooring install will cover the weekend before installation.

Here's a clue to how we spent last weekend.  Unfortunately, Saturday was a cold day and we had to work in the garage with the doors closed wearing jackets.  We would go inside the house to warm up occasionally - we had to let the paint dry anyway.



We are replacing the base trim in the bedroom with this lovely 5-1/4" trim.  In the closets we reused the narrow base, but we sanded it all down (on the patio in the cold) and repainted it in the garage.  Sanding down the trim from those two "small" rooms, made us REALLY glad we weren't sanding and repainting the trim for the bedroom.  Also, our bedroom has such a high ceiling, the narrow trim was really off scale for the room.

Painting the new trim was much easier than prepping the old closet base trim to be repainted.  But we figured no one will probably see that closet base trim again until we move out of the house, so we didn't really see a point to the extra expense of new trim in the closets.



The paint job didn't turn out as perfect on the trim as we would have liked, but honestly we discovered it's WAY better that the paint job that was on the trim we removed. (and the old trim was probably painted by "professional painters")

The base trim in the family room is stained wood to match the doors, window sills and one accent wall that is paneled with REAL wood.  I know a lot of people paint over the wood paneling from the 80s but this is REAL wood paneling - high dollar stuff in today's construction market.  I refuse to paint over wood of that quality.


Our bedroom is painted and completely empty of furniture!  I intended to add wider crown moulding in conjunction with the paint and flooring project, but there was just way too much other stuff to get done before the installers arrived.  We'll tackle that at another time along with removing the popcorn ceiling.  Really too bad we couldn't have done those two project before the new floor went down.
(sigh, some girls are never satisfied)


When the room was empty, it got a close inspection by a curious cat.

Next up - Day One of the Installation!  Woohoo!

Laura


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Sunday, January 27, 2013

Happy Anniversary To Me

I normally don't write a post on Sunday, especially on a busy weekend like this one.  Our wood flooring installation begins tomorrow and we've been working like crazy this weekend to get ready for the install.  We've been painting the base trim and moving furniture.  We're not 'camping' in our bedroom tonight. Our bedroom is totally empty and we'll be sleeping in a guest room.  But I had to say Hello today because I sat down for a little while and was looking over some blogs and realized it has been ONE YEAR today since I wrote my first post on this blog.  So I thought I should acknowledge the anniversary or birthday of my blog, whichever it is called.

What an adventure it has been!  I've learned a lot and I've made some friends. I have enjoyed sharing with you and getting to know my fellow bloggers for the past year.  Time sure does fly when you are doing so many projects and trying to take pictures and blog about them!

I'm looking forward to the next year of learning and sharing and getting to know even more people.  I am honored, humbled and frankly amazed, every time I look at the stats that show the "audience" of people out there reading my blog.  So where ever you are around the world if you are reading this post, know that I appreciate the time you spend here and every comment you make.  I hope you will continue to be my "friend" in the year ahead.

Blessings and joy to each of you,


Laura


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