Laminate Flooring

A few more walls were painted on Monday and we got to work yesterday sanding down the entire first floor in preparation for installing laminate flooring.  Sanding was such a pain (literally) and making sure each seam was level was tough, but I think we managed to get the job done.


DAY 98

Peaking into the master bedroom.

Purple accent wall in our geek room.

DAY 99

Sanding things down.

DAY 100!!!!!

We started installing the laminate flooring today.  First, we had to swiffer the entire first floor.  There was an insane amount of dust and it will definitely need to be cleaned a few more times before we officially move in, but we got a large portion of the room cleaned.

Installing the floor was tough at first for a few reasons.  Simply figuring out how to snap them together was one thing, then figuring out if we want to randomize the pattern or not and how, and then spacing things properly.  Unfortunately, our baseboards are on and painted and we weren't about to take them off to do this properly.  The flooring calls for some wiggle room around each wall, but they also need something hard to press against (spacers) to make sure everything is in tight.  We were going to put small pieces of wood along the edges, but they kept moving and bending under the floorboards.  Our elderly neighbor stopped by and gave us a tip.  Put a small nail in the wood to secure it and the nail hole will be covered over with the shoe molding afterwards.  Perfect!  We got started and pounded the flooring together while also creating a pattern every 12 rows, so you really can't tell there's an actual pattern.

We had to stage the flooring in the rooms to allow it to adapt to the humidity of that room for about two days.

Our spacer solution.

The end of the first day and about 7 hours of work.  We got to the hallway and will continue to work on Friday.  Good stuff so far!