My hopes of a timely floor installation were misguided, lol.  Everything my husband does, turns out amazing.  He’s a perfectionist and has great skills. But that means it takes time and before he can start he has to know how to do it right.  If I push him to move faster he has a stress outburst.  So I wait and tiptoe around and ask if I can do anything to help.  Around 6pm, (2 and a half hours after I expected to lay the first board) he announces he needs to buy a sliding compound miter saw and a rotating saw to lift the door trim (which was installed all the way down to the subfloor.)

I’ve been dreaming of owning a sliding compound miter saw since the first day I saw Ana White’s blog.  So initially the sound of buying a saw gave me this happy feeling deep down. But shopping for such a large tool needs time:  Reading online reviews, consulting Consumer Reports, finally choosing the exact model and then waiting for a sale/coupons or finding an online deal.  And I wanted this floor done…today.  I encouraged him to go quickly. He called me from the store, saying the good saws ranged from $400-$600.  YIKES! And that he would find someone to borrow a saw from.  What? How long will that take?

Amazingly he was back by 7 pm with NEW saws.  The drama.  And what a cool miter saw it was.  It had a laser guide light and a self retracting blade protector.  I didn’t have have the courage to ask what THAT cost.  But we have 3,000 square feet of floor left to lay as part of the kitchen remodel–it will pay for itself.

We started laying out foam underlayment.  (By “We” I mean Mom and Darren.)

 I didn’t know that the underlayment had to go up the wall 2 inches, so am glad I resisted the urge to lay it out earlier in the day for him.

The cool thing was it had this self adhesive water barrier tape stuff to connect each section to each other.  Other types of foam underlayment require an additional tape purchase (which I also didn’t know about so didn’t have on hand.)

At this point I’m living on Theraflu just to stay in the room as an emotional support.  The first row of boards goes in (I’m laying on the black foam underlayment saying things like, “Wow, you are amazing.” “I’m so glad you know how to do things.”  “This is looking great.”

And Darren says stuff like, “How do you make sure this floor is square with the wall?” “It’s floating, will it move off square?”  “Did you notice any squeaks in the floor that I should fix before we go further.”  (I’m thinking, “Don’t stop!  Don’t get distracted…lol.”)

 

We knew we wanted to off-set the seams in the floor and since these were manufactured boards and not real hardwood, every board was the same length.  It turns out, when he cut the last board in the row to fit, the rest of the board could start the next row automatically varying the seams.  Perfect! And no waste.

There were only a few different patterns of boards (which we didn’t’ realize until we had locked two identical boards in side by side.)  Which Darren was NOT happy about, but I said my phrase that had been my signature phrase for days, “There will be so many beautiful things in this room that no one is going to look at THAT.”  (That referring to any flaw that was bothering Darren at the moment.)

After the third row of flooring went down, Darren told me the story of a youtube video he watched.  A handy-man videoed his non-handy wife laying the floor,  click click click.  I listened to this and I thought, if she can do it, I can do it.  So while he went to cut the last board of the previous row, I clicked in the next row.  It WAS easy.

So for the next few hours we worked like that. I almost forgot I had the flu.  Then 1:30 am hit and the night-time Theraflu dose was forcing me to sleep.  I reluctantly left my Mom and Darren to finish.  When I heard him come downstairs to bed, I looked at the clock, 5:30 am!!  My poor mother husband!

“When did Mom leave?”

“Oh, she left early–around 4.”

Me “Gasp.” When I planned this project I expected to be miserable myself, but I didn’t mean to make everyone else miserable too.  I need to learn more wood working skills!

After a few more hour sleep it was time to move in. This was the best day ever.  We had a ton of work to do before Heather got home the next morning:

 Hang the curtains and artwork.

Assemble the bed.

Clean up the hall. Cringe.  And reinstall her doors.

Sort through all her things still in Caleb’s room and create a place for everything so she could keep it clean.

Rub and Buff Gold the details on the white frames.

Annie Sloan Clear Wax a protective coat on the painted desk.

Heidi was amazing!  I was still not feeling great and stumbled around in a fog while she was the real brains behind the organization.  Mom was sick from staying up so late the night before.  (I feel really badly about that.) I called her to let her know we were doing ok and just to rest.

Already dark again?  And there was still so much to do!  Darren was busy nailing in trim around all the furniture I moved in prematurely.

 At 2 am, we called it quits and went to bed.

Tomorrow — is the big reveal 🙂