Project New Floors - #2

Ok...so its been a busy past 3 days. Too busy to update the progress properly. Until now.

There is lots to report on, so let's get right to it.

To act as Project Lead, we brought in expert help. Meet Christian Pack. He was the guide and  mentor during this stage of the Project.

Christian with his "I'm All Thumbs" pose

Day 3: The Rebirth

To start, the laminate being laid down is thicker then the old stuff. So we needed to reduce the height of the baseboard (that we were leaving attached to the wall).
With a Jamb saw the baseboard was cut so the laminate could easily slip underneath it. This was done everywhere but the Family Room (as there is no existing baseboard in the there).

We decided to start in the kitchen.
The dishwasher needed to be removed as there was still baseboard underneath it that needed to be excavated to expose the sub floor. Pretty easy. However, it was later determined that the dishwasher shutoff valve was not working correctly, and caused water to leak, which, of course ended up soaking the sub floor. (why would anything as simple as a shutoff valve work properly?)

Later that night I went got a proper valve and installed it. But here is a shot of our temp fix.

In the meantime, as we waited for the floor to dry there was plenty of other work to do.

The sub floor in the Kitchen was not level. So placing laminate on it would be a teeter-tottering good time. The floor needed to be plained down flat (difficult when there are nails in the floor).

Just a plain floor, right? 

Once the floor was ready we could start laying down the underpad (on the non-wet areas). With the underpad down, we could sync up the floor to the living/dining room and creating the "line" from which the Kitchen, Hallway & Fam Room would be run.

Meanwhile the Fam Room floor needed to be eradicated of all staples much like the Kitchen floor. So while Christian started getting the floor going...once again I was relegated to staple removal. I swear that if I see one more staple in the next little while, I am going to lose my mind!
Then underpad was laid down in Fam Room.

So by the end of Day 3 things looked like this:

Day 4: Keep Truckin'

As we continued the progress in the Kitchen and the Fam room there was ample supervision.

"Watching my man do physical work, fills me with triumph"

Not much to describe here as it was basically cutting and laying flooring all day long until completely done.

Here is the finished floors (the lighting in each room makes the floor look sightly different, but it is all the same):

Day 5: Perimeter Duty

This is the final day, and Kel is on vacation in Washington, so from this point forward, you will most likely being seeing this before she is. (note: she also took the camera, so the following pics were taken either with the phone or tablet, so excuse the quality please)

Anyway...this is where it gets interesting

The first part was laying new quarter-round in the Hallway and Kitchen. The old stuff was just too beat up to lay back down and looked horrible against the new floor. So that was my job.

I delegated and gave Christian the more skills-oriented work.
In the Fam room, there was an added challenge of figuring out how to run the speaker cable to the surround sound speakers. It used to run under the carpet, but now with flooring, that is not an option.
The resolution we came up with was to put a base board molding in the Fam Room (where previously there was none), and build a cable channel into it where the cable would run and be hidden.

The base molding would be a square design to compliment the style of wainscoting that runs around the middle of the room.

Here is some pictures of the baseboard design:

Once installed you can see how the cables came in and out of the molding.

Next it was time to paint the molding too match the wall color. But somehow the info on what that color is, had disappeared. The wall is a type of real-wood panelling that continuously splintered when i tried to chisel a chunk out of it and couldn't get a big enough piece for them to computer scan a color match. So I needed to drill a new large hole in the wall (where furniture would cover it) and get a large sample. However, in drilling the hole, when I went to pull the drill back out, the chunk fell down into the wall. To make a 45 min ordeal short, a coat hanger and some gum helped to retrieve the piece. And luckily they were able to color match it.

After painting the walls looked like this:

Next it was time to go and pick up the Family Room's new rug. Which is a pain in the but to install by yourself (its new so a bit wrinkly)

Here are pics of the finished Fam room.

Shots of Kitchen and Hallway

Any way, I think that it is it for the blog.
But the work is not 100% done.
- I still have to get new hallway closet doors as I had to remove them completely (hopefully in my shots you can't see it as it is an eyesore). The previous owner bought doors the wrong size and "jimmy-rigged" them into place with bits and pieces of materials. I refuse to put up crappy doors after spending so much time making the place look half decent.
- I still have to caulk the quarter round, fill in nail holes, and paint holes white.
- fix the power in the closet...that's right I said power in the closet (I didn't talk about this in the blog...but if you see me and want a good Home Reno story, ask my about the Hallway closet security system and power outlet...its unbelievable).
- In the family room, I need to run the speaker cable under the brick hearth where it won't be seen, and on the sides paint it the same color as the fireplace to disguise it.
- New furniture for Fam room will be coming soon, so there's that too.

As always, thanks for checking this out and letting us share this experience with you.

K&K

Project: New Floors

Well its been seven months since any renovations occurring in the Harkins household. But progress is not embraced by the passive, and thus I am induced to advance forward, embracing transition and striving towards sublime perfection. (feel free to interpret as: Kel is making me do this)

The main floor of the house--since we've moved in--has three types of flooring. The living room and dining room with one kind of laminate. The kitchen and hallway with another laminate. And the Family room with carpet. Overall it does not make the house uniform or flow evenly.
Well, we're about to change all that.

(Editors Note: technically there is also the floor of the powder room, which in a past blog we showed it being re-tiled, and the laundry room, which is a future tiling project to come...so it is not the entire main floor but more like 90% of it)


We really enjoy the living/dinning room flooring, so the goal is to place it throughout the remainder of the main floor. Otherwise we would be forced to replace everything.

We didn't have anything to go on but a SKU#, but after many calls to stores, Kel finally found it. Of course she did. And of course that meant the project is instantly Green-lit.

So this project is going to consist of ripping out the laminate flooring in the Kitchen, Hallway, and the carpet in the Family Room, and replace it with the same type of laminate in that is in the Living /Dining Room.

Before we move forward....here are the before pictures.

 Family Room (aka Pita's Apartment)

Hallway into the Kitchen

Hallway leading into the Family Room

Kitchen

Alrighty then, let's get started.

DAY 1: Demolition Derby

Step 1) remove the quarter round from around the hallway and kitchen walls. Would have been a real simple task if not for the GIANT nails holding the wood in. They were massive and difficult to pull out. What should have been an hour task was 3 1/2 hours. Further, I was trying to salvage as many of pieces as possible so I wouldn't have to redo it all. But in the end, the nails proved too stubborn and much of the wood simply splintered.

Disproportionate nail to wood thickness

Step 2) Next it was time to remove the existing laminate. That is the easy part, just lift it up and out as fast as possible.

Ok...now that the laminate is up, we can see what exactly is going on underneath.
And its not good.

The idea is that we want to continue from Living/Dining Room straight through to the kitchen. But it appears that the kitchen floor is raised higher. Oh, oh.

This is the transition piece that was used to bridge the gap (a wood ramp sits on top of that)

Lifting up the laminate underpad revealed the culprit.

Yes. The previous owners had vinyl tiled over it. Not once, but twice. And the vinyl was sitting on a backing board attached to the subfloor.

I started thinking that I could lift the vinyl to get at the screws to take up the backing board, but lifting two layers of vinyl was just beyond difficult.

So it was time for the brute force approach.

Step 3) Pry the unwanted backing board away from the sub floor.

Um...ya. Easier said then done.

They had used not only screws to attach the board, but also staples...lots of staples. And then for good measure they added some more staples.

Reaching under the board...and this is what I was grabbing

So it was slow and steady. Pry, lift, get punctured by staples. Pry, lift, get punctured some more. Have I mentioned getting punctured by staples? Well I did, a lot!

The wood so much as didn't get separated off the floor, as it was violently ripped asunder, chunk by frustrating chunk. Thankfully I've been blessed with an abundance of powerful muscles and this was the opposite of a problem. #fibbinginmyblog

However, once it was all up, there were still a lot of screws and staples embedded in the floor. They were sticking up just enough to be a pain, and were too big to hammer flush.

Step 4) So now it was time to rip all the staples out. I tried prying them up, but that wasn't going anywhere. The best way was to use a hook screwdriver and pull.

So how many staples had to be yanked out by hand? 629 staples.
There were 113 screws to remove too, but thank goodness for the power screwdriver.

629 staples - 113 screws

At least the kitchen floor is now demoed.

DAY 2: Demolition...the softer side.

If any part of demolition can be considered a prance-in-the-park...its carpet removal.
Time for this pee stained eye sore to go. (to be clear, it was the dog peeing on it when she had Pancreatitis not Kel or myself).

Easy. Lift and cut easy to roll sections (kudos to my Dad for teaching me the loop knot, as I haven't used it since I had to tie newspapers up on garbage day...but it helped in tying up the carpet rolls). Did the same for the underpad. And pried up the carpet tack border.

And in only a couple hours, the Family room is ready to go.

Not sure what those stains are. I don't think Pita could pee that much in her lifetime. 

Well, Day 3 is about to begin and let's hope it is an easy install. Ha! Ha! Ha! (I make myself laugh).

And finally, an update from Pita:

K&K