Feet on the Floor

So, we just did this:

Yes!  Flooring happened.  And it is so pretty, thanks for noticing.  Here are a few more shots:

 

Sorry all these photos are taken from weird angles, but we can't walk on our floor until tomorrow night (the glue needs 24 hours to cure before use).

And really, this took us four hours to do-- it couldn't have been easier.  If you're thinking about putting prefinished engineered hardwood anywhere in your house, you can absolutely do it yourself no matter how little experience you have.  Simple process: lay out a row, making sure the joints are attractively staggered and there's nice variation in your pieces; measure the last piece and cut it to fit with your handy circular saw; put a quick bead of glue around the bottom edge of each board's groove; tap each into place with tapping block; repeat to make next row.  Voila!

As I've mentioned before, this beauty is Bruce 3" Engineered Hickory in Wheat.  It cost $3.49/sq.ft. from Home Depot's website (which is the only place I could find it-- lots of places sell Bruce Oak in Wheat, but the color is really different-- super red-- and though it's much cheaper at $2.79/sq.ft., it's just not nearly as pretty).  I was thinking I'd also put it in the laundry room and they tell you to account for 10% waste, so I ordered 9 boxes; we used 4.5.  Since you can use the offcut from one row's end piece as the start to the next row, our total waste was nowhere near 10% (which would have been 14sq.ft); I'd say we were closer for 2 square feet of waste (all tiny offcuts).  I'm undecided about putting it in the laundry room; my biggest concern is that the washer might leak at some point and totally ruin my floors.  Does anyone have experience with one of those rubber pan-things that goes under a washing machine?

 

Anyway, we chose our pieces to match the color and length variation in the flooring in the rest of the house, so we tried to find and use as many pieces as possible with burns from the sawmill, knots, and other irregularities.  And I love it.  I absolutely can't wait to get in there and trim the big window.  Then we just need to buy, install, and build-in the IKEA Bestas to hide the wack-ness under the big window.  And deal with the baseboard situation.  And so the renovation continues.

Just because I can't resist:

Now: