New flooring

I have been busy laying the new floors upstairs. Trevor's birthday was Saturday. He has been wanting his carpet gone for a while. I figure I can give him a present of new floors. Trevor has opted to miss football practice, two practices on Saturday, to go with the scouts water skiing. I would do water skiing  over football practice myself. He will be gone from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, potentially enough time to get his room done.

I have been to my favorite discount home improvement store and picked up enough laminate to do his room in a similar look to the vinyl I am using in Riley's room. I forgot to tell you I finally motivated and earlier in the week got to work on Riley's room. He has been without flooring since we moved in. I ripped his carpets out first thing for a clean room. Even so he did get sick on new germs from school. I had his filter going all the time for the first few months we lived here. Now that summer is upon us, he just keeps his windows open for fresh air and breezes.

I was back at habitat for Humanities to buy more of that vinyl I like. It goes in so easy compared to the laminate. It looks lovely. though, I have some concern that it wont stay glued down.  Poor Riley has been walking on his subfloor for  a year. The seams between the boards were obvious and ugly. I layed the vinyl down right over the whole sub floor, seams and all. It took an afternoon. You can cut the vinyl with an exacto knife. It snaps when folded. No running downstairs to the saw on the deck for cuts. Even the difficult cuts were easy. I loved how quickly it installed. Riley's room looks so much better.

I did not have enough of this stuff to do Trevor's room so I found enough of this laminate I used instead. Someone had torn it out of another home. It was used, but there was enough to do Trevor's room, and it was a near match in color to the vinyl in Riley's room, enough that I don't feel like I have different flooring in every space upstairs. Besides, when we do have enough money we'll hardwood everything and this vinyl will become a nice padded subfloor, not wasted money.

Trevor's room seemed to take forever after working with the vinyl. Tom left to have a guy's day in Portland. I could be noisy with my tools with Tom gone. I had to cut a piece for every row and Riley had to help me install the lengths. It goes much easier and faster with two people laying the rows. By 8:00pm we had reached the closet and the door way, special cuts. I called it a day as doing special cuts requires time and thought and not rushing. Trevor will like what we did. 95% of the room was done.

In one day I had removed all the carpet and the staples and the tack strips and layed the new floor. Riley was my runner he carried the carpets out and emptied the garbage cans regularly as I filled them with debris. I did all the cuts. Riley had no interest in learning how to use the miter box chop saw. Trevor loved playing with the tools when we did the hallway, but Riley was happy to just carry gross carpet out of the house, well happy may not be the right word. He was glad to have the carpet gone as much as I was. Touching the carpet was not his favorite thing, but he did the work. He asked if this was a pro bono job. I told him I would give him $15 again for his hard work. He did not grouse about touching the carpets.  

Other than just dust and dirt, Trevor's carpet was in pretty good shape. Only one spot looked like it had been used as a bath room. Just having the carpet gone though, made the room smell fresher and cleaner. There is always that grainy sand under the carpet needing to be swept away and confirming my reasoning to rip it out.

I bought an upgraded pad for the underlayment, remembering the pad this time, which I forgot in the hallway project, when I put in my old stuff,  Trevor being such a big boy with loud feet. His room is over the dining room area downstairs. I had to laugh as I left Home depot with an upgraded pad. The underlayment pad cost more than the flooring did at Habitat for Humanities. $60 for the flooring, $100 for the underlayment. I could feel the difference in the upgrade, it was worth the extra money.

I finished Trevor's floors  Sunday morning, doing the closet cuts, which as I had guessed took a long time to get right. I wasted two boards making mistakes that I could ill afford with my limited materials, but I ended up with a few spare boards in the end when I was done.  The end result was worth the sweat equity. Trevor had me move his furniture around a little to try different locations for his monster big desk. The nice part was everything slid easily across the smooth floors. 

Trevor is happy about his floors and the fact that Riley and I did all the work and surprised him on his birthday. He is still looking for his bike, which I also told him I would get for a present, But we will do that later in the week.

Trevor is having his foot surgery on Tuesday for his ingrown toe nail on his big toe. Tom is mad we didn't get it done before football season but football season just exacerbated the problem to the point where we now have to deal with it again. The nail grew in at its own pace. Can't help that it came to a head while trying to fit into football cleats. Trevor is ready for the nail to be gone and the toe cauterized so he doesn't have to deal with the infections anymore. He has been soaking that foot every day for months. The nail just grew back wrong.

I have been wandering into the boys rooms admiring my good work. Riley and Trevor are both happy with their new floors. We have decided no one likes the old laminate that we put in the hallway. I am going to see if I can get those last boxes of vinyl at the discount store and continue with that flooring in the hall.  Rip out the stuff I just installed, wrong color, too modern, just doesn't go well. They had enough boxes for the hall but not enough for Trevor's room last time I checked. Hopefully it will still be there. You never know what you might find. Even something for my next project inspiration.

I bought shelf brackets for 50 cents each to organize the garage. I think that may be up there on my to be tackled next list.
  

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