New oak floors

So I’ve been a little bit in accessible for the past 3-4 days because our house has been under some renovation. About a month back, our dog chewed a hole in our carpet helping my wife and I finally make the decision to take the carpet our of the bottom floor of our house and install wood floors. So, starting this last Thursday — the great construction project began. The goal had been to finish this project over the weekend. So Thursday, Alyce and I did a little bit of prep work (moving some furnature, cleaning the house a little bit. But Friday is when the heavy lifting happened. Friday, I moved all the furnature out of the house an all the wood for the floors into the kitchen. After moving everything out of the house, Kenny and I pulled up the carpeting and the padding. My mom came up Friday night and helped me remove the moldings, finishing pulling staples out of the floor and laying the underlay for the wood floors (moisture barrier). Since the first floor was now under construction, everyone had to live just in the bedrooms — which made entertaining the boys a treat for my wife. Especially on Saturday, when we had the saws running and we really couldn’t have the boys running around in the work area. So Saturday was the big event. My good friend Kyle — who without, I wouldn’t have gotten this finished, came over and from 8-8:30 Saturday, helped me install the floors. ~460 s/ft got installed allowing us to finish the flooring installation in one day. We installed an engineered hardwood floor partly because we have kids so moisture is a bit more of a concern (and engineered floors tend to do better) and partly because it was going to simplify installation. Saturday night, when I went out for a bite, Alyce surprised me by refitting the molding. This was a nice surprise — because I’d planned on reinstalling the molding Sunday and wasn’t looking forward to trying to figure out where everything went again.
Sunday, after letting the floors sit, I reinstalled moldings, trim, and brought all the furnature back into the house. Ugh. I think I might have tweaked something in my neck (over worked it a little) because I woke up last night with a throbbing headache. Thank goodness for those magic headache pills that both dull the pain and help you sleep. 🙂

Anyway, I think that they turned out very good. Our dog isn’t too happy with the change in floors — but she’ll live. The boys however, love it. They’ve been running back and forth over the floors in their socks and fighting over who gets to sweep the new floors. 🙂 I snapped a couple of pictures this morning — that way you could still see the new floors before they get cluttered with toys, etc.

Front room with Goldie hiding on the area rug.

Kenny playing with his cars on the floors. He loves that his cars can now fly across the floors.

More of the front room

Kenny, hiding behind his new Cars toy. I think this is Lightning. We haven’t seen the movie yet — but we will soon. The toys however, are a big hit at our house where we have two boys that love playing with cars.

–tr