Floors

I am starting to lose track with the order in which things were done! I don't want that to stop me from updating the blog so I will post pictures and updates as I see fit. We wanted to replace the hardwood floors before our move in date of Jan. 1st. Originally, we priced out dark oak floors as we wanted to match the dark oak staircase (see picture). We were trying to meet a tight deadline and found out that the factory was closed over a two week period which would have made it impossible to meet our time line. We went to another company and found a similar dark maple that was priced even lower than the oak. Even better, they had the wood in stock and available for immediate delivery. The reason that the wood was such a good deal is because it was separated in two seizes (3 inch planks and 5 inch planks). We were always interested in the wider planks but it worked out that they had just enough 5 inch planks for our main floor and 3 inch for our second floor. With our narrow hallways upstairs and smaller rooms ... it was meant to be!

Unfortunately, with ripping down walls and the electrical work we ran out of time. We had purchased all of the wood and had it all delivered so it sat in the kitchen for a few weeks until we were ready. Within a couple of weeks of moving in Chris and I (with some help from a couple of friends) ripped up all the floors on the main level, pulled up all the nails -- generally the nails are about 5 inches apart so there was a sea of nails (this is where I could be the most help), and pulled off all the baseboards. Our plan was to do all the prep work ourselves but hire people to install the actual floors.

Because we had removed so much wood, we needed to rent a cube van to transport it all to the dump. Renting the truck for a few hours gave us the opportunity to buy and transport the giant pieces of ply wood that we would be using as a sub floor. A lot of work went into the sub floor. There was measuring, cutting, remeasuring, recutting, securing the floor with screws, adding more screws to avoid creeks, and lots of leveling. The amount of time we spent on the sub floors reconfirmed our plan to have the actual hard wood installed. To complete the main floor, it took a crew of four 12 hours to complete and we couldn't be happier!