One room done...

I've been out of town a couple of days this week, and have a finance test tomorrow evening to study for but I still found the time to get a lot of work done this weekend. The dining room is complete, the hallway almost done, and the family room is getting there.

This week I spent a lot of time dry fitting wood. When there was more than enough for a whole bucket of glue to cover Danielle and I carefully numbered each row and piece and pulled all of it back up. That way we knew that everything was cut to fit. That worked out MUCH better than trying to measure and cut as you go. We did a couple hundred square feet in about 2-1/2 or 3 hours, some of which was the last row in the hallway going forward (see: really hard to do because you pretty much have to lay a whole row of this stuff at a time because of the interlocking system that holds it together). There really weren't any problems this time around.

I was also able to get the baseboards back on and all the trim done in the dining room. There really isn't a whole lot to getting the baseboards to look good. Sand them with coarse sandpaper and then medium, and it'll hold paint pretty well. There's no need to sand through all of the old layers of paint unless you're trying to remove dings. Then fill the old nail holes with painter's putty, take care of any dings and then paint. It's pretty straightforward, and loads easier to do while they're not attached to the wall. Don't forget to remove all old caulk from the baseboards as well as the wall before nailing them back on. If all your cuts were accurate (and your baseboard is thick) you won't need shoe molding.

The only part that isn't more or less obvious is the caulking. I recommend caulking along the top and any left or right corners on the baseboards, but not the bottom. The best way I found to do it is to make a small cut at the tip of the caulk tube at about a 20-3o degree angle, about 1/16 inch in size. Load it up in the caulk gun and start at a corner and work your way backwards. At the end of each piece of baseboard run along the thin bead of caulk with a finger to feather it in and the results will come out just like the pros.

Anyway here are some pictures from the dining room now that it's all put back together. My apologies for the picture quality - I took them on my mobile because the memory card on the camera was full.





I'm hoping that during this week I'll be able to find the time to cut all remaining flooring so that next weekend we'll be ready to glue down the last of it.