We finally had the money and inspiration to put down a wood floor in our bedroom. Well, the latter applies to me, I guess, since I am the one who researched it and went ahead and ordered the wood after getting the all clear from my husband. The carpeting in there was so horrible looking, I am sure it is a lot of the reason we don't breathe too well. When I pulled it up, some of the boards around the edges that have little nails sticking up and hold the carpet in place were rotted out, as were parts of the padding. More mold and icky unhealthy stuff. I have always thought carpets were disgusting because they house mites and dust and who knows what else, and because of the chemical off-gassing but seeing what it was like under there, I wonder how people can still choose wall to wall.
Last weekend, we took all the furniture and moved it out. We removed the base boards and dug out the pieces of wood that held down the carpet. Then I painted the room. How freeing to paint and not worry about drips! Since then we have been sleeping with the beds up against the couch. I admit it was fun for a few days, kind of like camping out, but the clutter is getting old. It will feel so spacious once we get it moved back.
The wood I ordered arrived early in the week. I so wanted to do bamboo, which is environmentally responsible and quite reasonable in cost, but more than that, I wanted the project to be doable and finish quickly and come in at the lowest possible cost. The wood I found was $1.09 a square foot. We have no cross ventilation in there so I didn't want to deal with glue fumes at all nor lose time to clamping and waiting for glue to dry. I wound up choosing a no-glue floating laminate floor. Now I realize it's mostly pressboard and plastic. I think I read somewhere that the wood you see on the top is actually a photograph of wood. That would make sense because the instructions I found online said to be sure to open a number of packages at once and take wood from all of them for even color distribution. I quickly realized there was no need for that.
Three of our packages were damaged in shipping. I marked it on the bill and I could make a claim but the replacement wood wouldn't have arrived in time and I was determined to do this project all in one day. I doubt they would refund me and I certainly have no need for more wood.
Since we were already moved out of the bedroom, it had to be this weekend. It's a three-day weekend, which has turned out to be important since we are not quite done yet. Since I knew I'd ordered plenty of wood to do both the bedroom and closet, I decided to simply not make any mistakes and not need the damaged wood. I will let the company I ordered from know that they really need to pad the ends of the boxes. If the shipper so much as puts the wood down on end too heavily, the wood can be rendered useless, depending on which end. I guess you are supposed to carry the boxes from the middle? But they are heavy and awkward. I think I even chipped a corner at home before I realized how delicate those grooves are.
Before I started, I figured I'd just cut the ends off the damaged pieces, but in actual fact, it doesn't work like that. If you cut off the left end, you can use the piece to start a new row. But without the right end, the wood is useless unless it's the last piece of the row. I did salvage a few of the damaged pieces for starting or finishing rows but I wound up with over 2 boxes of damaged wood and still nearly a box to spare. Thank goodness I am good with measurements and sawing and didn't make a ton of mistakes! My husband could not figure out how I was measuring and marking and kept trying to correct me but I confidently tuned him out and I was always right.
We had checked out rental saws last weekend at Home Depot and were told there was no need to reserve. Wrong! We got there and they had nothing for us in an 8" saw but they called over to another store and they had a 12" saw and put it on hold for us. Of course it was more expensive and much bigger. We had hoped to get a whole lot done on Saturday but unfortunately, we didn't even get home until nearly dark and started working then. The tutorial the guy in Home Depot gave me was great. I took a woodworking course in college (twice, actually), and used to be pretty comfortable with wood, but later, I took an adult education course at a local high school and I lost confidence completely. In retrospect, I decided that the problem was that the high school's saw blades were dull and filthy, covered in sap, and with proper equipment, all my skills would come rushing back. True! I was only nervous for the first few cuts. After that, I really fell in love with the machine and was able to fudge my way without an actual clue through a few tricky cuts where I had to get around a corner. I only messed up one piece trying to get the hang of it. Well, I did do a practice piece and thought I had it but nope. So I think that is the only bad cut I made! Except for the times I tried to used a piece that had already been cut for the end of a row. Oops. But those pieces were already started so it was no big deal.
So many elements of this project didn't really come clear until we were well underway even though I read a lot of articles online. Most articles had no photos or were about a different type of installation. The spacers made no sense to me at all but what I finally realized is that our walls don't go down to the floor at the outside edge (you only see this when the baseboards come off) so the spacers simply won't work. They just tip over. I was also totally freaked out about how to do the final row. I assumed I could rent a saw to cut it to width, but nope, the saw I rented can't do rip cuts and I wasn't about to rent again. I assumed I could take the pieces to Home Depot, but nope, they only do cross cuts. I added up the inches and assumed I'd need a fraction at the end. When we got to the last row, I was flummoxed that the piece worked so perfectly. Well duh. I was adding up 8 inch widths, but with the tongue in groove, the actual width is something less than 8 inches so it worked out absolutely perfectly. Whatever. Thanks angels! We do have a gap in the closet but I am ignoring that. I will leave spare wood and a puzzle for the next owner.
The first row was hell. I was going to do this project myself but I was pretty near tears within a short time. The spacers kept falling right over. When I tapped the 2nd row into the first, of course it moved way under the wall and I just didn't know how to hold it out. And every time I laid the next piece of the 2nd row and tapped it in, the previous piece on that same row came out a bit. It was so silly, running back and forth, tapping, crouching, back breaking. I asked my husband to help and he hit the same problem. Now, I am one of those types that has a short span of patience, and we'd mostly snacked with all the running around getting ready to start, so I was really losing it. He helped at that dance for quite a while. I shouted profanity, I think. Not sure, really. Not my best moment. Finally, I thought maybe a third row would help stabilize the whole thing. I just do what I wanna do and so does my husband, so he didn't embrace my idea, but he didn't stop me, either. Thank goodness, it worked! My short patience came in handy that time. I did really gain a new appreciation for his ability to persevere in a frustrating situation. I am not sure now how long we were doing that dance. It could have been half an hour before my stroke of genius.
Another sticking point for me was how to do the last piece of each row. I knew that the rows were tongue in groove but I hadn't realized that end to end, they were also tongue in groove. So I didn't understand how to do the last piece. I called the flooring company for advice and they told me to build a whole row and then slide it in. It sounded great in theory but in practice, it didn't work at all. It just came undone, even if we worked together. At close to 20 feet, that isn't gonna cut it with floppy wide laminate. Maybe it's a different game with real wood. So anyway, the solution was to simply tap the last piece in straight because there wasn't enough room at the edge to compensate for the tongue and then pull it snug from the end. The spacing around the edge of the room is less than the width of the groove. So the last piece of a row needs to slide right onto that groove. There is a nifty tool you use to pull it in. The installation kit came with no instructions so we made up how to use it. We put one small lip down over the end and hammered on the other sticky up end to snug up the end piece. Seemed to work but it did mean that the nifty end-pulling-in-tool got bent out of shape periodically. Lots of pausing and loud banging to try to reshape it. Also, the plastic tool we used to tap each piece in was pretty bashed up by the end of the project. I believe I paid about $25 for our installation kit which included those two tools plus the useless spacers. I just saw much sturdier, nicer versions of those two tools at Home Depot for reasonable prices so I will quite happily toss ours now that I know what to look for and where to find it. No more woods floors going down here, but I do intend to do this again some day. Though if you'd asked me in the first 30 minutes I'd have said no way!
We worked later than we should have the first night but figured only our downstairs neighbor would mind and as far as I can tell, she's away. Today at noon, a neighbor from the floor below, down the hall, came pounding on our door, totally worked up into a frenzy. She said everyone was furious and that we had to stop right away. She had company over. Sundays are not for working. Everyone was going crazy and she was going to call the police. My husband dealt with her as best he could while I stayed out of sight. He couldn't get a word in edgewise! I called the police and they did confirm that there is an ordinance, but that if someone did complain, they would just ask us to keep it down. No jail time or anything. I said that Sundays are only a quiet time if you are Christian. She was a bit stumped by this. My husband went downstairs to talk to the neighbor and explain that we had paid a lot for the saw and needed to finish up. She had supposedly been throwing a tea party but he found her home alone and probably somewhat embarrassed at having lied about that. She agreed to give him 2 1/2 hours. Well we worked like dogs for the next 2 1/2 hours. We had done about half the first night and it had taken us about 4 hours. We finished the bedroom and the closet in two hours. I laid out the pieces, my husband crouched, crawled and tapped, I measured end pieces and cut them, and we both sweated a lot. It was just as well because it motivated us to haul butt, but really this whole unneighborly thing was silly; I have heard loads of people banging on their project any day of the week, and well past 10pm. Oh well. She could have been out enjoying an extraordinarily nice day but she chose to annoy herself with her thinking about what we should be doing.
My husband struggled a lot with the last row. It was just like the first; the moment he got one piece in right, the previous one would slide out. We tried a variety of techniques to overcome this issue. All of them involved a lot of loud banging. Finally, as time was ticking down, I came up with a solution. Again, impatience does lead to some brilliant solutions. What I did was I took a junk floorboard and put it on the floor, flush to the piece we were trying to snug up. I took another piece and laid it on the lip where the groove sticks out to maximize purchase. And I wedged as many pieces as were required, in this case one, from the top and against the wall. Then I pushed the vertical pieces out from the top and quite silently and easily slid the last row snug, piece by piece.
We returned the saw with 1 1/2 hours to spare and chose our baseboards. When we got home, we realized that the floorboards didn't have enough space at one side of the room - the side where we finished. All that tapping had caused the floor to slide so far to that side. It wasn't going to work. There was no room for the wood to move so it could actually take down the wall if left like that. Perhaps since it isn't real wood, it won't move much, but I didn't want to risk it. And on the other side of the room, the gap was too wide and the baseboard didn't cover the gap. We were gonna use that poor beat up old nifty tool but I couldn't see how a person standing on the floor could bang on a little piece of metal and cause the entire floor to slide. So my husband suggested we try my wedge technique again. It was superbly easy and totally quiet. We had agreed no banging past 2:30pm. We shifted one side, then the other, and centered the floor in the room. I did leave too large a gap in one place between two doors. Oh, that was my husband, actually, as he was responsible for setting the starting gaps and this was on the left. So the baseboard isn't going to cover that gap. We are going to see if we can stick a little something behind the bottom of the baseboard to make it stick out enough to cover the gap.
Home Depot didn't have the threshold covering to cover the gap to the closet nor the little tiny version of same to cover the very edge at the bedroom door. There is a marble threshold but if I don't cover the tiny gap, it will fill with filth. Those last details will have to wait. I surfed a few sites but couldn't find the one place I'd seen drawings of all the options. I put what I think is called a quarter round molding at the edge by the balcony. Probably not the right thing at all but it was a bit of a splurge and is the only solid hardwood in the room. It's cherry and it's gorgeous. The balcony doors are metal and this will cover the base and make it less likely that we trip over it, an unexpected bonus. I guess I'll have to glue it? I wonder what kind of glue is right for that job.
We did most of the sawing of baseboards by hand this evening. I had wanted to use that nifty saw I rented and play with angle cuts, but I wasn't prepared to rent another day and we just didn't have enough time yesterday since I didn't have the baseboards in yet. Doing it by hand sucks but the miter box we picked up today is better than the one I had before. My husband did the first load of cuts but then he lost interest about halfway through and I took over. I have always hated sawing but I got a sort of zen about it. I did the first cuts backwards, a tip I remember from that college course; just lightly drag the saw towards yourself. I just did as many pulls as I needed until I got deep enough into the wood that the cuts on the miter box would line up the saw. The baseboards are just a bit higher than the box. Then when I started sawing, instead of using a lot of pressure and having the saw skip and have to constantly reset it, I figured out to just relax and used only the weight of the saw on the push stroke. It went slowly but so much more smoothly like that. Better to relax and not be frustrated. Tomorrow, more bang bang. But according to the downstairs neighbor, projects are to be done weekdays from 8:30 am to 4pm. No problem there. Then the furniture comes back in and we're done! No more stinky disgusting stained smelly filthy carpet!
Next time I do this, I will use real wood. Now I know. I still love the floating glueless aspect of what we did, but it's not actually a wood floor, just a picture of one! Still, it'll be much cleaner and I bet my daughter's sinuses are much better for it. Poor thing. This project has taken a toll on her. We've had to ask her to stay out of the bedroom entirely, which she doesn't always agree to, because everything we're doing just makes her more sneezy and stuffy. I do hate that we didn't use a natural product and I wonder what kind of chemicals it gives off but we're not going to be here that long and it simply wasn't worth the investment to go for real wood. When we move to a place we intend to stay, I'll be researching these issues very carefully.
Help! Seriously, help!!!!
Today, while driving, I heard on the Diane Rehm Show that Alec Klein, Stuyvesant graduate, class of 1985, was guest speaker. Mostly I heard "something something Stuyvesant something something" while answering a non-stop stream of questions from my two girls and trying not to shush them. Of course I had to hear about the show on my car radio and still 10 minutes from home, cell phone battery beeping in its death song because I hadn't charged it properly. My wonderful aunt called and I answered the phone with "NPR, right?", totally taking her off guard with quick wit (or so I tell myself) as is my way. So of course I arrive home totally frazzled, rushing my 2 kids, running around plugging in radios, frantically redialing the telephone, heart rate through the roof. Luckily, I got through and was accepted and spent most of the show taking deep breaths. Turns out that the heart rate was not due only to running in the house with two kids. But I digress.
Brushes with fame remind me that people who wind up in the limelight often do have a special quality. It's more than just charisma. If I could see auras, perhaps it would be clear to me what the difference is.
l yearbook and the whole audience was impressed. I am not surprised; I had the same exact experience shortly after his first book came out. And, as before, people treated me as a celebrity-by-association after the talk. Mostly, people want to know how he was as a teacher.
He was, as it turns out, exactly like he was as a speaker. Charming, funny, entertaining, full of delightful stories, humble, real, accessible, lovable. I wish I could have more of him in my life!
