hardwood how-to

The last time I showed you my family room it looked like this, posted here.

And last time, I {sorta} showed you the hardwood that I purchased from Home Depot, posted here.

Handyman got home from work Friday evening, changed his clothes, and started right in on taking the tile out of the room. (This is why I have very little in-progress photographs. He gets right to work, and if I'm not around to snap a few pictures, they didn't exist.)

Using a crowbar and hammer, Handyman removed all of the tile by the front door. He had the children carry it to the Bagster, posted here, in the driveway.

He removed the top layer of the vinyl flooring, leaving the under laying paper layer.

Then, he ground off the residual tile mastic leaving the underlying plywood sub floor smooth. We wanted a nice even, level surface to lay the hardwood.

After laying the black tar paper with a staple gun, it was time to start laying the hardwood. We rented this tool, a hardwood gun stapler and double sided mallet hammer from Home Depot for $75. It just plugs into an air compressor and makes the work a lot easier than doing it by hand.

Handyman and his dad followed the manufacturer's installation instructions.The hardwood we purchased is factory finished and has a tongue and groove. The pieces easily interlocked into each other for a tight fit.

  

After the floor was in, it was time to install the baseboard. We wanted the baseboard to be flush with the our new door trim. The baseboard we purchased wasn't as wide, so we add width with a simple furring strip. These are easily cut on a table saw.

The baseboard also had to accommodate a few other cuts, such as our shoe cabinet, since we chopped the legs off it no longer accommodate the taller baseboard trim. (The legs come long enough to not to do this, but we wanted our shorter.) If we remove the cabinet, we can easily pop in a new, non-cut piece of baseboard trim.

This is the closest wall color -gray with a little bit of a blue undertone.

We also had to accommodate our two heating vents. We did this by lowering the vent so the vent cover occupied the widest part of the trim. We have access to these vents in the basement, so lowering them a smidgen was easy.

The final floor task was finishing the space between the floor and the doors. This was just standard weather stripping.

The finished product

We still have all the touch up work left, but almost all done . . .

Now my family room floors match the rest of the hardwood floors throughout the rest of the house.

 Even though the room is empty, I think it's better than when we started.

You can read more about our family progress:

• what it looked like when we bought it
• removing the coat closet
• how the whole project started
• why we needed new flooring
• shoe and other storage without a mudroom
• all the changes we did along the way
• checking the sub floor 

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