Thursday, June 7, 2012

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:

TDC Before and After

18 comments:

  1. We installed Bruce floors in our entire upstairs about a year and a half ago. Time consuming, but soooo worth it. We LOVE them.

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  2. Looks really great! Tell Sally hello for me.
    :) Kimberlie

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  3. That floor looks amazing! Love hardwood floors, wish I had them here. Grew up with them and never really appreciated them then, everyone else had carpet!

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  4. It looks beautiful!
    You are so lucky to have a handyman. My husband would never tackle a flooring job. Never.

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  5. Wow! What a beautiful transformation! You guys should be soo proud of your adventures and progress... this looks amazing and with four little ones too!
    Thanks so much for joining in the under 300 followers blog hop.. I am your newest follower~
    xoxo
    Amie @ Pinkapotamus

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  6. Wow! You all did a fabulous job on this room!

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  7. It looks like a different house...How wonderful....Blessings, Becky

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  8. great job on the floor and the baseboard. It looks fabulous.
    gail

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  9. your floors look wonderful! Visiting from NBTP MM.

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  10. WOW, what gorgeous floors. Nice job!

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  11. That is a lot of work ya'll did but it was worth it all. What a great looking room! We are going to redo our bathroom floor with this kind of floor. I'm looking forward to it. I would love all of our floors to be done this way but we don't have that in the budget right now. You did great! Come by and see us. We are your newest followers.

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  12. Oh my goodness, that is the same room? I love the new floors! I love the whole new look! Thanks for sharing on Tout It Tuesday! Hope to see you next week.

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  13. Wow. beautiful job.Thanks for sharing.

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  14. Wow! your floors look beautiful! I am so envious...I would love to remove ALL the carpet in my house and have hardwood throughout...even the bedrooms. Just another item on my LONG list of "to-do's".

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  15. Great transformation! Beautiful job!

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  16. The more drawn out this surface sullying is left on the floor, the all the more profoundly installed the flotsam and jetsam moves toward becoming and this makes more harm the wrap up. If not took care of, this can really strip away the complete and leave crude wood uncovered. Hardwood flooring

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