Installing A Hardwood Floor, Part II --- The Next Weekend

Next Saturday, July 31, 1999 saw much progress. Despite running a number of errands and not getting started until around 3 in the afternoon, we got all but the last few rows in the main part of the room done, and those we got racked out and ready to be nailed the next day.

sm / med / lg

Sometimes though, you just have to stop and smell the roses (though I think these are lilies)...

sm / med / lg

On Sunday morning, I finished nailing the boards in the room that we'd racked out that I could get with the stapler, then ran out to Hood River for a late lunch with my parents. On my way back, I picked up Burr and we finished the main part of the room, except for the thin strip we have to ripsaw the length of for it to fit up against the wall. At this point, I realized that one of my plans for trim in the room was going to be tricky. Basically, I want to use a dark wood for the mouldings and door/window frames, and I want to use it for doorway thresholds also, so the frame goes around all four sides of the opening. I think that will look really nice, but... that means we need to leave a gap and then figure out how to fit in the dark wood in it. So, we put that part off, as I haven't even picked out the particular wood I want to use yet (that's one of the nice things about doing it yourself --- you can change gears mid-stream and it's not anywhere near as expensive or as much of a nuisance to others).

Thus, the next part was to align the first board inside the closet and staple as much as we could with the stapler so I could return it on Monday and we'd be completely done with it. However, at this point we realized that while the main room was pretty square, and we'd reached the wall with only 1/16" difference between the two ends of the room, the middle of the wall bowed a little. The closet doorframe wasn't perfectly straight either, and we had a wedge between the two parts of the room. A wedge shaped dark piece in the middle of a room of white wood, would stick out like a sore thumb, so we decided that while it was going to be tricky, the ripsawn piece was going to have to be the wedge. Burr pointed out that we could lay in a wider piece than needed in the doorway and then rig up a jig for a router to make a nice smooth line to match up with the accent piece in the doorway. It was also at this point that I realized we should have laid the wood from that end of the room so the ripsawn piece was at the far end, and not in the rather visible closet doorway, which I intend to leave open and put a bookcase in or something (since this is the office room).

Anyway, the end result is that we got another two or three strips nailed down before we got too close to the back wall to use the stapler, and called it a day. We'll finish the rest of the closet this week, and then worry about how to do the trim work...

sm / med / lg

One of the errands Saturday was picking up the floor vent; I've been spraying it with a varnish, as it was unfinished. I'll take some better pictures of it later...

sm / med / lg