Operation: Hardwood

I'm so happy to announce that the flooring is done. After about a week of solid work, the entire house (minus a few spaces) is properly floored. Let's start with some photos:

This is our "den" room. Remember the carpeting here? Stained everywhere but under the couch. This was the first room we started in, and the flooring went in quickly on the first day. Eagle eyes may notice a very nice new light fixture. We bought two of them and installed them in place of a burned-out fixture on one end and a ceiling fan on the other. The fixtures just came from our local Home Depot, and were chosen for their minimal depth and neutral look:

It's my unfortunate luck that, after installing these lights, I'd go to Ikea and find some slightly more modern fixtures that I liked much, much better. For less money. Figures.

The challenge in this space was the closet at the far end of the room. When you install hardwood flooring and come to any type of doorway where the flooring continues into another space, you have to make sure the hardwoods align with each other, so the boards can continue through the doorway. This means striking guidelines to show where the floor needs to meet up, and almost-sort-of working backward to determine where to start the flooring in the next room. Not all rooms line up, so you end up with partial-width boards on the edges of the room.

At each doorway, you have to cut the jamb to allow the wood to pass under, as well. You also have to notch flooring (sometimes) to get it to fit properly. This is probably the most challenging part of the install.

Under the flooring, we used rolls of underlayment, which create a vapor barrier as well as some padding to make the flooring more comfortable and less noisy. That stuff is super easy to put down and self-adheres, so I don't have any real photos of that process.

Here's our dining room:

It went smoothly, as well. Notice anything in here? We have new curtain rods and curtains! Aaaand a new light fixture in here, too:

This one is from Ikea. I liked the industrial look and the adjustable height. It gives off a nice cone of light, but would definitely be better with some light cans above to fill in the space above the fixture.

The living room went along swimmingly, too. After the flooring was down, we applied the baseboard trim. We bought contractor packs of 16' long, primed MDF baseboards. After a coat of paint, they went  in quickly thanks to my dad's precision measuring and a little help from an air nailer.

The final room was the back bedroom, which we all finished together:

And let me tell you, there was much celebrating:


Stay tuned for plumbing woes, electrical issues, wildlife invasions, and what happens when you decide to do "just a little exploratory demolition"...