Happy birthday to meee

I hate to admit it, but I just might have found the one renovation task that, well, I actually enjoy. I've certainly expounded at length on how much drywalling or insulating or digging sucks, but there have been precious few tasks that I've admitted to not hating.

Flooring, on the other hand... well, I actually LIKE it. I mean, if I didn't enjoy it, why would I spend the entire day - on my birthday of all days - looking forward to leaving work so I could get home and do some more of the flooring in my office? I even considered bailing out early so I'd have more time to work on it and maybe even get it all done before bed, instead of having to finish it later in the week. (As it turns out, I didn't leave early, and I therefore had to finish it later in the week, but hey - I actually looked forward to that part, too.)

Anyway, I thought that maybe the best way to explain why I like it would be to try and document the process. So, without further ado, this is how to lay an engineered hardwood floor - the Don and Amy's Broadmead Reno way.

The first step is to clean, scrape, sweep, patch, fill, and prep the subfloor. This may, as in our case, include a half-box of coated floor screws driven in every eight inches or so along the joists to tighten up any warped boards and reduce the amount of squeaking. If you have a War Department, get her to to do it: she's really good at it. Also, get her to patch the floor if you can, because that stuff is hard to work with and she's probably already got the knee pads on from putting in the screws anyway.

So, once the patching compound is dry, give the room a good sweep and a quick vacuum, and you should have something like this:



Nice colour, eh? It's yet another Restoration Hardware-inspired choice, called "butter". (We used the "saffron" from the same collection in our bedroom, and the "butter cream" in the downstairs hallway.)

The next step is to gather all your tools. If you're like us (and who isn't?) you probably keep all of your tools in the garage, which requires several hundred trips up and down the stairs because of course you're working on the room that is the furthest you can possibly get from the garage and still be in the same house. Once you've gathered everything you think you will possibly need, organize them on the opposite side of the room from where you intend to start putting down your floor:



From left to right (mostly), the assembled tools are:

• Work light: used to mess up your sense of time so you can keep working long after it gets dark and you should have stopped for something to eat.


• Ear protection: almost everything you're working with is LOUD. Especially the compressor.


• Hammer: used for pounding things, like staples that didn't go in quite far enough.


• Nail set: (hidden behind the hammer) used to keep the hammer from hitting the flooring and wrecking the edges when a staple didn't go in quite far enough.


• Screwdriver: not required, actually, unless you left it downstairs, in which case you WOULD need it and have to go downstairs (again) to get it.


• Box cutter: used for cutting the underpad and (sometimes) fingers, and opening the boxes.


• Safety gogglers: like the screwdriver, completely unnecessary unless you don't have them, in which case a freak, never-happen-again-in-a-million-years accident will send a staple directly into your eye socket. (I wore mine.)


• Pencil: used to make pencil marks.


• Tape measure: used to determine where the pencil marks should go.


• Brad nailer: not actually the ideal tool for this. We really should be using 16-gauge nails, but our little nailer only takes 18-gauge. Given that the flooring is really light, however, and I can make up for the weaker nails by using more of them, I figure we can get away with it.


• Stapler: used to pin down the underpad to the subfloor so it doesn't move around while you're trying to work on it.


• Floor stapler: I love this thing. It's my second favourite tool, behind the reciprocating saw (of course).


• Big-ass box of staples: surprisingly economical, given how much the smaller packs cost. I'll never use these up - not in this house, anyway - but it was still cheaper than trying to buy a bunch of smaller boxes.


• Way-too-long air hose: seriously - WAY too long.


• The Incredible Hulk: our Kawasaki air compressor that we bought for a ridiculous price at Costco. This thing is loud, large, and in charge, baby. And really hard to get up the stairs. I actually filled it up while it was still in the garage because it's REALLY loud, and I figured the cats would appreciate not having the Hulk roaring away on a bare wooden floor for half-an-hour.


• Big roll of underpad: there should be lots left over to do the War Room.

Also required, but not shown (and therefore most likely requiring a separate trip back downstairs to fetch them when you realize you've forgotten them):

• Flooring blocks: used to brace against the lip/edges of the flooring so you can whack them into place with the hammer without having to whale directly on the floor. Still can't believe I forgot about these things when I was prepping - you literally can't do flooring without them.


• Scrap blocks: used to ensure you have adequate space around the edges of the floor to allow for expansion.


• Broom: to make sure there aren't any little bits of wood or other debris underneath the underpad before you staple it all down.


• Magic bar: to pry up the first row after you screw it up (I'll get to that in a minute).


• Pliers: to pull out staples that didn't go in anywhere close to far enough.


• Knee pads: cause, otherwise, your back is going to burn like the fire. Oh, and your knees, too.


• Chalk line: trust me on this one.

So, once all of the necessary tools and materials have been gathered (the actual flooring itself - Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron - has been sitting in the upstairs hallways and bedroom closets for more than a year; it's the one thing I DIDN'T have to bring up from downstairs), it's time to get busy.

I started by measuring the width of the room to make sure that the last row wouldn't wind up being an inch thick or anything. Luckily, the room size and the width of the planks match up fairly well, and the final row should be about four inches - close enough for government work! Let's get started!

The first step is to lay down a piece of underpad. The stuff we're using is supposedly designed for maximum noise reduction under engineered hardwood, and we got a big roll of it when we got the floor. Next, I grabbed a few likely pieces of our fine flooring and started laying them out.

Now, when working that close to the wall, you can't use the flooring stapler because the handle and the magazine for the staples stick out the back - you simply can't get the tool close enough to the wall to place it over the tongue of the flooring (unless you've got 12" wide planks, which... we don't). So you have to use either a hammer and nails, or - like me - a brad nailer held at just the right angle. It also means you have to be extra careful putting in the first few pieces - which I certainly THOUGHT I was.

Uh, not so much. The first row I put it looked okay, but once I started laying out the second row, I realized I didn't quite have it perfectly straight - the next pieces were not fitting anywhere near tightly enough. So I pulled them all up and tried again.

The next attempt seemed to go in quite a bit better, and I even got the floor stapler going to snug up the second row. Unfortunately, once I took a closer look, I realized that I had followed the wall a little too closely - because the wall was curved.

You can't see it in this picture, but trust me, this is not good enough:



So I ripped it all up again, and did what I should have done the first time: asked the War Department what I was doing wrong. She suggested that we get the chalk line out, and measure equal points from the far wall - that way the flooring would stay straight as it came across the room. We did, and snapped a nice clean line that I could use to line up the first row of planks.

Much as I hate to admit it (any more than I absolutely have to, anyway), she was totally right, and the third try produced a nice, tight, straight first row that only looked better once the second and third rows were installed. (It's a good thing we've got extra wood!)



Once I got to the fourth row, however, I had to deal with the first finicky bit; the closet opening:



Fortunately, I had actually planned ahead (shocker, I know) and aside from having to make a couple of extra trips up and down the damn stairs to trim up the inside piece on the table saw, I managed to wrap the wood around without any problems, and got in a couple more rows before I ran out of working hours and had to call it a night:





The next night was actually my birthday, and with the War Department out at the opera (gettin' sum kulcher), I was free to keep plugging away at it to my heart's content. Which I did. Got a fair bit done, too; I was doing so well, I had to stop and remind myself to take a picture so as not to let it all get away from me (I had to move the compressor and work light to the other side of the room anyway):



And here's where I stopped for the night and treated myself to one of the excellent Scottish beers my Crazy Neighbour™ left on the front steps for me in honour of my birthday (seriously, is there anything in this world better than free surprise beer? I doubt it...)



It was actually about 10:30 at that point, and I had reached the limit of what I could do with the floor stapler. See, you need a fair amount of room on the front side of the stapler too, what with having to swing the big-ass mallet around to drive in the staples. From that point on, it would be mostly the nail gun and a lot of finicky work around the door opening and up against the wall, and I was utterly gassed.

I couldn't work on it Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I geared up again and, after a quick jaunt over to Home Despot to pick up some more nails for the nailer, I got right back at it and finished it all off:





Even tidied up a really narrow bit tight up against the wall inside the closet, too:



All in all, I'm quite pleased. It looks really good, and the War Department did a great job of locking down the subfloor, so it's really solid and doesn't squeak a bit. So now, it's off to Rona to get some trim, and then the fiddly stuff REALLY gets going.

While you're all here, though, it's been a while, so here's another edition of everyone's favorite feature,

The Injury Report

The good news is that I didn't hurt myself while doing the floor and therefore avoided splashing blood all over the new hardwood. No, it was actually a couple of weeks ago that I smashed my left hand with a hammer and walked around with a bit of a bruise for a few days.

Why did I smash my hand?
See, I was fixing an axe, and trying to knock the old handle out of the axe head. I was holding the axe head on a stump while swinging at it with a hammer. I missed the piece of metal I was using to drive out the handle, and whacked myself a good one right on the base of my thumb.

Why was I fixing my axe?
It's not my axe, it's Amy's.

Why was I fixing Amy's axe?
Because I broke it. Again.

What do I mean, again?
Well, TECHNICALLY, it's the first time I've broken THIS axe. Which is actually her splitting wedge. The other axe, well...

Did I break Amy's other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice.

How many times?
TWICE. (And no, despite what Amy says, I really only broke it twice. She says three times, but the "third" time I broke it, I hadn't fixed it from the second time yet, and I just, well, I finished breaking it - totally doesn't count as a separate break.)

Did I fix that other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice, now. After I finished fixing the splitting wedge, I fixed the other one. Again. So I fixed two axes that day I hurt my hand.



Am I going to break her axe again?
No.

Why not?
Because she won't let me use her axes anymore. I had to go and buy my own. Ones with fiberglass handles.

Why do I break so many axes?
Cause I'm good with tools.



In my defence, I've never broken her hatchet, and I've used it plenty of times.



Yes, I know it has a metal handle.

Shut up.