Sweat-equity

Hi Everyone,

The "sweat-equity" has begun in the Sax household with the installation of new hardwood floors. As a couple who is very green we decided to restore some old flooring that Erik's piano teacher was replacing. This has been a month long process with Erik doing most of the work. Here are the steps that we took to even BEGIN the installation:

1. Sorting the wood. This involved many hours of Erik inspecting and creating "A","B" and "C" wood. "A" being excellent, "B" being needs work, and "C"...not worth it!
2. Knocking out the old nails. This was a pain in the behind. Erik knocked those nails as hard as we could and then I would stand on the boards and pull them out with a hammer.
3. Sanding the poly and stain off. My arms weren't strong enough, so Erik did this all himself.
4. Organizing our wood piles inside to "acclimate" them to our house temp.

Then the real work began.

We started the installation on Friday, August 24th. We spent Friday night ripping up the carpet and prepping the subfloor. What a pain. The folks in the house before us decided that in order to keep the carpet padding down they needed to use 10,000 staples. Jerks! It took us about 5 hours to get to the point where we could lay down flooring.

Saturday we woke up EARLY as sin and got into Home Depot, rented the pneumatic nailer, and started the installation process. Things were looking good until we looked back at our pile of wood and realized we were running out, FAST. We didn't even finish the dining room before we ran out of wood.

Thankfully, that meant that we could take a break!

We ordered more wood, picked it up on Thursday and discovered that the edges don't come mitered on unfinished floors. So, another step for us to do. Joy. We sanded and routered the edges and we think they came out pretty well. It took us all day Saturday and Sunday to get through the living room and over to the kitchen door.

We stopped Sunday night when...

...I went to go saw a piece of wood and slipped on some scrap wood in the garage. I sprained my ankle. I am able to walk, but am slow and pained. Poor Erik had to wake up on Monday morning and finish the floors himself.

Despite the tedious prep, injuries, and sore muscles the floors are INSTALLED!!! Now all we have to do is stain and poly. Let's hope that our ankles and other body parts stay aligned!

We'll have pictures up as soon as I get Erik to help me figure out how to do them!