A day of Prep

Tom and I were lying in bed watching the news. He asked me what I was thinking and I said I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the upstairs hallway carpet. He said, and I quote, "Rip it out and put down what ever you want." Now of course this is with a budget of zero. He went on to say eventually he would rip out  temporary fixes but for now just get it done.

I have the really nice cherry hardwood, about 100 square feet. Enough to do the space but the wrong color. Too dark for the other woods visible and it would create the problem of a different wood or surface in every bedroom upstairs potentially, tacky. So I am  saving the good stuff. It is Sunday night so of course my favorite discount store is not open for another two days to see if they still have the vinyl strip fake wood that I used in the family room. I still have several boxes of the cheap laminate I put upstairs in the old house. Paid 39 cents a square foot at the time. I did the whole upstairs except the master suite in this stuff. Not good with water if you let it sit but otherwise good stuff.   

 Putting in the laminate would be free as I already have it, decision made. I wouldn't have to wait two days but could get right to work. I could even use the dinged up crappy boards knowing eventually it all will be ripped out again. Meanwhile the floors will be smooth sold surface and clean clean clean. I just love the fresh clean, always clean of solid surfaces. That was one of the little side bars that Tom admitted to me. He said I had finally convinced him of the superior benefits of not having carpet. It is so easy to clean his man cave so it sparkles like a magazine photo. Carpet still shows the spots or quickly returns to dingy after cleaning. Tom's man cave looks lovely even when it isn't very clean.

Monday morning Tom left for work at his usual 4:45 am. I was tempted to get up and start right to work, but I remembered my poor neighbor on oxygen who begged me not to start projects before 8:30 am if at all possible. I drifted in and out of sleep until 8:00am  then got on the computer to kill another half hour. by nine I had gathered my wonder bar and hammer and pliers and flat headed screw driver, and my exacto knife. I started pulling and cutting carpet and pad. Trevor was out of the house so I had Riley carry the carpet out to the carpet pile I am accumulating, which I will deal with later. By the time I had removed all the pad and carpet, my garbage cans were full of pad and I dragged the cans up onto the street for garbage day.

Garbage   day is still a couple of days away but Trevor was gone last Friday and we forgot entirely to take out the garbage as that tends to be his chore. Riley had to do the dirty deed this time. The carpet and pads were filthy and stinky. Underneath looked like someone had again dumped out a sandy shoe onto the floor. I had to sweep and dump several piles of dust from the dust pan. Once the there wasn't so much nasty grainy stuff to stick to my knees and seat of my shorts I could go to work. I was still pulling grunge off my knees but it could have been so much worse. In order to remove the tack strips and staples that held down the pad in place, you have to scoot along the floor,  hammering the wonder bar under the tack strip to lift and pop it up. Each staple has to be pulled out in order to avoid it popping u under the new floor. Laminate wont snap into place if there is a bump under a board.    It took a couple of hours to do the whole prep work. That meant I had time in the day to start laying the floor.

I found the laminate harder to work with after laying the vinyl strips last week. The vinyl was so flexible to work with, it just slipped in where ever I needed it to fit.   This time I had to take off the molding so the laminate could get in close to the wall. I also had to periodically hammer down  nails that stuck out from where the molding had attached to the wall to get the nail out of the way of the flooring, so the flooring  would snap into place.

 I set up the chop saw on the deck, which meant running up and down the stairs. I could do a couple boards at once to save trips, but you can't get too far ahead.  Sweat poured off my brow, but I was excited with the project. It was nice to be finally using up that laminate that I had dragged all the way up here during the move last year. It has been a full year now as of August 6 since we moved.  

It took two days to do the space, lay the laminate. Just under 100 square feet. They weren't even full days, just a few hours each day. I ran errands with the children and grocery shopped in between.  Tom came home and admired my work but wanted to know why I hadn't laid down the foam pad that goes underneath. I gave him a startled look and said that this was a free project and I would have had to buy the underlayment.  $25 for 100 square feet of underlayment. I totally forget the underlayment in my excitement. So the floor creaks a little when you walk on it. I can hear Trevor when he sneaks out of bed to play x box or go to the kitchen for a snack. But the floor looks lovely, and the nasty carpet is gone, and it was free, other than my sweat equity.

I could pretty easily take the flooring all up and lay the pad down, then relay the floor. It is one of the advantages of laminate. It is reusable like Lego's. Everything is cut now, the pieces could be numbered and put right back in place. I think I will leave it though, the creaking isn't bad. If it does begin to bother me, I will fix. It may settle with time also and be imperceptible. I wont forget the underlayment again.

Today, the discount store Habitat for Humanity is open. I am going to see if they have any more of the vinyl. I think I will use the vinyl in Trevor's room. Get rid of the carpet in his room.  Riley wants something different. Maybe I will find some more laminate for Riley. He likes the laminate better than the vinyl, the feel of it under his feet.

All this flooring is temporary. It gets the carpet out of the house, which is my goal. Eventually, after the gas is brought in and the laundry moved upstairs and Tom gets his dream kitchen, I will order enough real hardwood to do all the upstairs myself in one beautiful choice.

FRom the upstairs hallway you can see the yellow Oak of the living room floor, I am tempted to use  a lighter color upstairs than what we did in the man cave. I couldn't help checking out the stores I surfed when I picked the man cave floor. I could find what I like for well under $4 a square foot, and have a decent selection. I am dealing with less than 1000 square feet total. Add it to my wish list. Meanwhile, I am having a blast getting all the carpet out and practicing my floor laying techniques.