Flooring install

[KC]

Spent the week installing flooring in the Nebraska City house.  Went up there planning to demo the closest/wall between the two bedrooms, hang a new kitchen/back door, install some trim, finish wiring the garage, AND install the flooring everywhere but the bedrooms.   I DID demo the closets/wall... so a truckload of plaster/lath to the dump... but the flooring took waaaay longer than I expected.  Even with periodic help from LOML.  


Anyhoo... 3/4 3" natural red oak Mullican flooring.  No effort to match color/grain anywhere... just put it down.  That's what Jean wanted.  I had 20+ cartons of floor up there, and four or five longish pieces had unmanageable 'bends' on the tongue edge.  Cut those up for inside the pantry.  Maybe 5% of minor 'bowing' on the groove edge on anything over about 4', but only two or three pieces that were too much for the nailer to close up.  Very, very little bowing along the end-to-end length.   Handful of pieces that were machined a wee bit shy of 3".  Enough to be noticeable if you don't catch them before nailing.  Overall... perhaps a bit better than what I expected.  Plenty of short pieces, to be sure.  

Had one jam with the Freeman flooring nailer due to operator loading issues 

 , and a couple of misfires when I got too close to the wall and didn't hit the plunger right.  Review of this affordable nailer... worth every penny, and probaby twice that.  I simply can't imagine doing this with a hammer like the old days.  Same for the poor bastage who nailed lath all day.  

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And if anybody knows how to fix that crooked storage door on the range, lemme know.  I didn't see anything that jumped out as obvious.

[R Clark]

Looking good.  I'll resist the temptation to make a comment about convenient placement of the fridge for a late night snack.  


"...crooked storage door on the range..."  I had to enlarge the pic way up to even see what you're talking about.  I guess it looks like the right side is a bit higher than the left side?  We don't have a range, so I can't go open it up to see how the drawer glides are attached.  I'm sure you've already looked at that aspect.

At any rate...I think the place is looking good.  You're certainly putting the work into it.

[KC]

Looking good.  I'll resist the temptation to make a comment about convenient placement of the fridge for a late night snack.  

   Had the bed in the living room when I was tearing up the bedrooms, then moved it to the dining room to do the living room floor.  My knees are in worse shape than I realized.  


It's coming along.

[JTTHECLOCKMAN]

What happen to the days where they said wood floors in a Kitchen was no-no due to water??  Amazing how things change. Looks good. My back could not stand all that bending over. Cheaper to pay someone to put them down in my opinion.

[Snipe Hunter]

It looks good. Nails or staples?

Glad to see you remove the base board first. It's a pet peeve of mine when installers leave the old baseboard and hide the ends with 1/4 round leaving a shot baseboard above the new floor.

I've found that if you try to match grain/color, you waste a lot of material.

You can buy grain and color somewhat matched and straighter planks but it gets spendy. The difference between $4.00 a sq ft. and $8.00 a sq ft. Same with the narrower cuts and non square ends on the shorter pieces. You don't see much of that at $8.00 a sq ft. You don't see many short pieces either.

It's cheaper to buy a cheap nailer and work at your own pace than rent a pricey one when you never really know how long the job will take.

[Snipe Hunter]

Seems like every flooring post and kitchen post has a furry friend in it.

[KC]

Baseboard was all off already, but I would've removed it if it hadn't been.  I'll probably still use quarter round because it just looks more 'finished' to me.  

Didn't really notice any pieces that were 'bad' out of square on the end.   And someone a couple weeks ago mentioned 'twist'... and I saw zero twist.  That stuff may all be in the boxes stitting in the garage tho.