Before and After pics

Since this project is more or less done with the exception of cleaning up a few things here and there I decided that it's time for some before and after pictures. Enjoy!

Entry and dining room before:


After:



Dining room before:


After:



Hallway into the living room before:


After:



Living room before:


After:



Kitchen looking into the dining room before:


After:



I'm not exactly sure what we'll start working on next. We'll do some redecorating with those floral window... things sometime soon, and we're also thinking about what to replace the tile surrounding the fireplace with (slate?). Also starting to think about the main bathroom because there's a lot to be done there too. At this point we're searching for ideas, especially about the bathroom because it's coming up soon. About all I know at this point is that I think I would like to tile to the ceiling in the shower, and that the green tiles in there will probably have to go. Also need to do some work with the cabinets. It's a pretty wide area so there are a lot of possibilities there. Anyway it's now a time for planning...

Carpet Transition

Every hardwood install will run into another type of flooring at one point. In this house there are two rooms with a carpet / wood border and four areas that border with tile, plus one transition with the front door. This weekend I'm working on the carpet / wood borders.

I have one where it's a simple doorway, and another more difficult area about 10 feet long between the entry way and living room. For reasons unknown I decided to try the harder one first. Anyway the first step is to nail in the tack strip that will hold the carpet down, about a half inch from the wood. On a wood subfloor this is easy, but on concrete... not so much. I recommend removing the all-purpose nails the tack strip will have preinstalled because they will just bend and chip the concrete. Then get a pack of plastic concrete screw anchors and some aluminum nails. Drill a hole the appropriate size for the plastic screw anchor and the tack strip, then drive in the aluminum nail. The aluminum nail will conform to fit the hole, locking it all in place. But before you do this, make sure the tack strip is facing the right direction! Go ahead, ask me how I know about that one...

So now that the tack strip is installed go ahead and cut back the foam padding so that it's about half to a quarter inch from the tack strip. Next get the carpet stretcher (you can rent these from pretty much any tool rental place and stretch the carpet. Attach it to the tack strip by folding it over from the carpeted area so that it engages the tacks. In other words, fold the end of the carpet back away from the wood and sort of roll it towards the tack strip. Rub the area over the tacks with a clean hammer to set them in the carpet. Repeat as necessary to work the width of the transition area. Cut the carpet so that it extends about 1/4 inch over the wood.

Lastly, run a bead of adhesive along the base of the wood and use a putty knife to tuck in the edge of the carpet. Don't walk on the area for a while to give the glue a chance to dry.

When you're done it will look a lot like this:





This weekend I got all the carpet / wood transitions done and worked some more on the baseboards. We're caulking on both the top and bottom. It's easy, just time consuming. The last things left to do are find, stain and cut the reducer pieces, clean up and take pictures for a before / after post.

Catching Up

I didn't realize just how many pictures I've taken without posting any of them. Here's a few of the better ones.

This is from when we were still setting the chalkine. Snowy is probably wondering what in the world we're doing and why we took away the carpet that he liked to run around on.



Ever wonder where all the furniture was hiding? I want to go back to when I took this picture and tell myself "Backfill NOW! This will be a lot harder than you think 2 weeks from today when the glue is dry!" The hardwood went through two rooms and a hall. Had I known what I do now, I would have only glued the first room and dry fit the rest of the first row through the hall and family room so that I could tell that everything was straight. Then built backwards from the first row that was glued down before it could dry. With the woodloc system Kahrs uses it's a nightmare to build backwards after the glue dries because of this foot that fits under the board in front of it and holds everything together tight. No way to get a board in from behind without slightly raising the board in front of it. Lots of luck with that if the glue holding it to the floor is dry.



Snowy sneaking into another picture. The dining room is dry-fitted and my camera is dirty.



Me nearly caught in a corner spreading glue in the dining room.

Still hard at work

Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm ok. I had a big test in Finance class last Monday, and now I have a test in Accounting in two days so I've been a bit busy doing things other than working on the house.

Danielle and I still found time to get a lot done this weekend. All the wood is installed except for two tiny pieces, measuring maybe a square inch or two each. Furniture is making its way back and finally the place is starting to look a bit more like where someone would live.

The big project this week after my test is to get the baseboards back in by Thursday and the place cleaned up because a bunch of people are coming over in the evening. Might be able to do it...

As of right now we're lacking:
-Baseboards: some in, some painted and ready to go back in, others untouched.
-Clean clean clean clean. And put up the tools.
-Reducer at all the wood / tile interfaces.
-Trim up and reattach the carpet (will farm this one out, hopefully it'll get done on Tuesday...?)
-Figure out how in the world to work a transition from the front door threshhold to the wood. Maybe t-molding?

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.

Saturday / Sunday - Still working...

Tons of lessons learned so far. To keep it short (because I'm tired), Sunday was a great day. Really productive. I did a lot of test-fitting and didn't glue anything at all. But I'll be ready when it's time to open the second can of glue.

Saturday... not so much. We got the wood installed in a straight line running through the hallway but made a couple of mistakes but nothing we couldn't recover from. Some of it was unavoidable. The locking system Kahrs uses (called woodloc) is wonderful on a small to medium sized room. It lets you install wood the entire width of the room one plank at a time because it snaps together on the front, back and both sides. However, if you're trying to install along a hall without getting in the glue that's on the floor it doesn't work so well because you have to pull up some of the last plank you put down in order to snap in the two sides of the next one. And then you wind up with glue everywhere. Not fun.

So lessons learned... if you're gluing down the wood make sure you have a big bucket-worth of wood ready to go. If you keep having to stop, measure and cut more you'll get in trouble because the glue will start to harden in the bucket. Not good.

It's next to impossible to work backwards with woodloc if the glue holding down the piece in front of the one you want to install is dry. This board will want to come up just a bit for the interlocking parts to engage, but it can't do that if the glue is dry now... On a related note, make sure you build all the way to both walls because with this system you can only stop and then work forward without having to do a lot of trimming to the interlocking pieces.

Another problem with woodloc is that if you have any sideways obstructions (example - casing from a door that enters the room on the side) you WILL have to remove the casing to install the wood. Unlike traditional tongue and groove that you can just slide in, this rotates downward as it snaps together. In other words, even if you trimmed the casing it'll still need more room to rotate in.

So I guess my thoughts on woodloc are the good:
Installs TIGHT. Seamless, and looks really great. Perfect for a small to medium sized room without obstructions. I think it's saved me some time, and the results look great so far.

The bad:
Instructions fail to mention that you'd better build an *entire* row at a time before the glue dries or else there will be difficulties. You also can't slide in pieces of wood under casings and door frames. I'll have to repaint a couple of door frames after this is all done because I had to cut out a couple of blocks along the bottom to get the wood to rotate into place.

So that's why today I just laid out wood in one room and cut it all to fit. I'll have to remove it to glue everything down but the pieces are numbered and organized, and I can work the entire width of the room at a time (rather than going down a hallway) so this will be much easier. No running back and forth to the saw while the glue dries.

Anyway, pictures to come when something worth taking a picture of happens!

Friday update

I'm getting closer to being able to install wood. Really I am. There is one small high spot to grind down this morning, and a little more self-leveler to do and once it's dry I can start building. FINALLY!!!

Ok fine. I have to take care of three door frames and the other side of the mantle first, but still. Almost there! I have no idea what kind of wood the mantle is made of but it's the hardest stuff I've ever had to cut through. I'm seriously tempted to use the cutoff wheel on the dremel to try and slice through this (it works on steel, so why not?). I thought it would be pine since it's always been painted anyway and I thought most mantles were made from pieces of molding for the most part but this one is something real.

So today's shopping list is short today. A couple of cans of expandable foam to run along the wall with because energy efficiency is a good thing, and one 10-inch saw blade for the miter saw.

Many thanks go out to the person who lives across the street for answering my endless questions about how to do this! The internet is full of advice, some of it is even good. But you can't beat asking someone who has already done the job.

Pictures to come this evening when I'm done!