We decided to re-floor our son's room first, since he is the one who needs the benefit of hard floors the most (and it's a small room that no one goes in so if I mess it up- no big deal!). We decided to go with wood laminate locking panels. It isn't the best flooring ever, but it is inexpensive (67 cents/sq ft), scratch resistant, and has a 15 year warranty. We don't believe in owning nice things, we have nice children instead, so when it comes time to make a purchase, cheap wins out 99% of the time. I guessed that the room was about 100 square feet (I don't believe in measuring), so I went to the store and bought 125 square feet of boards. Total cost about $100. I'm not worried about having extra, because I plan to use the same flooring on other rooms in the house later. The best part of this purchase is that last spring when we got our tax return, I put $500 on a Lowe's gift card because I knew I would need supplies for my building projects this summer. That money would have disappeared on toilet paper and McDonald's if I had left it in my checking account, but because I planned ahead, I had the money right where I needed it when I was ready to start my project!
Day 1.
So I brought my boards home ready to get started. This may be a good time to mention that I've never put in any type of flooring before. But I believe God gave me two hands and a brain, so I can do anything. Besides, I knew my sister had done it before, so how hard could it be really? So first I had to tear out the carpet. Never done it before, but it turns out it's pretty easy. Grab and pull, and grab and pull, until it's all out. Done. Next I discovered there was a pad under the carpet. Not sure about this discovery, I called my sister. On her advice, I removed the carpet pad. Grab and pull, and grab and pull, and repeat. Once all that was out I noticed that the floor was covered with nasty little staples. I thought a flathead screwdriver would be the best tool for the job, so I grabbed a butter knife and started picking out staples. At this point in the project my older kids came in to help. But after a few staples each, they realize it was not as fun as I'd advertised it to be, and they left. After the staples came the tack strip. Did you know that under your carpet is this nasty long yard stick filled with tacks? They go all the way around the room, and they are nailed to the floor in at least two billion places. So I went and got my crow bar and started prying up tack boards. I had enough elbow grease flowing to fry a chicken. Four hours later I determined that pulling up carpet is easy, but pulling up all those stinkin' tacks is a task designed by the devil himself.
Day 2.
Since the room was empty, and the flooring was now completely gone, this seemed like a great time to paint the walls (they were purple, and this is the boys' room). I am going for a San Diego Chargers theme in the boy's room, so I decided to paint the bottom half blue, and the top half white with a yellow stripe through it. I had the blue and yellow paint on hand from a room I painted three years ago, so I took my old buckets to Walmart for a fresh shake, and picked up an extra bucket of white. While in the shaker, my white paint exploded. This meant that I lost about an eighth of a can of paint, but ended up getting the whole can for half price. Score! So I bought my paint and a couple of fresh rollers for a total of about $8. I brought the paint home, and the kids and I had a fabulous time painting the room. When it was all done my five year old exclaimed, "That's it? I hate it! I wanted rainbows!" He would be blissfully happy with My Little Pony wall paper, but my husband and I are pushing for a manlier football theme, so we did it our way and the poor little guy will just have to deal with it.
Day 3.
Time to tackle the floor. The picture on the box showed a lot of fancy tools, but I'm not one for following directions, so I just got out my circular saw and went for it. I put a cinder block in the middle of the room, and rested a board on the top of it, then free handed the cuts with my circular saw. I must admit I am terrified of my saw. I always feel like I'm one slip away from cutting my leg off, but I put on a confident face so that my husband won't get too paranoid and take my toys - I mean tools - away. The boards I had had locking grooves so they fit together and locked in place. So I cut a bunch of boards and laid them down. They weren't exactly going together as tightly as I'd hoped, but they were pretty good. And when I came to a stubborn board, I would just hit it with my shoe to knock it in place. I got half the room done when I started to have doubts about weather my boards were fitting together tightly enough. At this point, I found the directions that came with the flooring - they were hiding on the back of the label. They showed how to fit the boards tightly together, but when I followed the directions, the boards fit even worse then they did when I was using my original shoe method. So I called my sister again. No answer. I decided to pull up the floor and try again. With a little extra effort, I got a much better fit on the boards, but I still had some gaps both vertically and horizontally. I also was concerned that the boards weren't fitting very flush against the baseboards. What was I supposed to do with that big gap around the edge of the room? I finished 3/4 of the room when my brother-in-law showed up. He smiled kindly and patted me on the head. Then he informed me that I first had to take the trim up. Apparently there is an order to these things. Trim off, floor down, trim back on (that way the trim covers the gap). *sigh* He also said my boards weren't fitting together tightly enough. When he looked at them more closely he noticed they were filled with dust. I explained that there was a lot of dust in the room because I had been sawing the boards in there as I worked. He gave me another pat on the head and then went outside and brought in his chop saw, which he left in my living room with strict orders that I was not allowed to cut in the same room where I was laying flooring. At some point during this conversation he asked for my tape measure. When he learned that I wasn't using one, he once again patted me on the head. He said the whole floor needed to come up and I needed to start again. He looked around at my tools and asked what I was using to hammer the boards together. I showed him my shoe. Another pat on the head. He explained that there are special tapping blocks and mallets and some other hookie-do-dad that are specially made for putting boards together. *sigh* So much to learn!
Yes I already used this picture before >>>>>But it put itself there, and I can't get rid of it, so you get to look at it twice! I'm a baby at blogging, so be patient with me.
Anyway... He left and I pulled up the baseboards, and pulled all the flooring back up, and started again. Third time's a charm. Unfortunately, now that the base boards were off, the floor was now wider, so the boards that were cut a little too short before, were REALLY too short now. So I essentially had a massive jigsaw puzzle on my hands where I had to piece together the old, already-cut too-small-pieces into a new bigger pattern. I happen to love puzzles, so it was quite a bit of fun, plus I got to use the chop saw which was something exciting I'd never done before (and was a lot less scary then cutting free handed with a circular saw). I also used a dust buster to clean out all the grooves in the board to make sure I got a tight fit, and when necessary I pounded them with my shoe. Later that day my sister showed up with the mallet and block tools that took the place of my shoe. It turns out having the right tool for the job does actually make things easier. The pieces fit tighter than ever, with no vertical gaps and only a few horizontal spaces showing. That night I finished most of the room with just a few boards left to go in the closet and the final piece to fit along the end wall. The last piece had to be ripped (I learned this new word - it means sawing a board in half long ways) to fit into the space remaining between the last board and the wall.
Day 4
I didn't have much to do because I had to wait for my board to get ripped. I don't have a saw that could accurately cut a board lengthwise, so I sent the board to my sister's house to be cut. I waited all day with nothing to do but stare at my floor. The longer I looked at it, the more those tiny gaps started bothering me. I knew the reason they weren't packed together tight was because I didn't have the right tool for horizontal hammering. I tried a crow bar and shoe method, but only succeeded in moving the entire floor over an inch! I started thinking about taking up the whole floor again and trying to position them tighter. Luckily sanity won out and I went to Lowe's and bought the tool I needed. I came home and in less than five minutes, I had hammered all the gaps out of my floor! I'm starting to be a believer in using the right tools for the job. I finished up the closet and used up my very last board. My 125 square feet of boards was the perfect amount! The room isn't quite finished, because I'm still waiting for the last boards to come back to me, and then we'll replace the trim and move on with our life.
So the project still needs a little more work, and my poor boys have to spend another homeless night sleeping out in the living room. But I'm feeling really good that I learned a new skill this week and we finally got the carpet out of our sons' bedroom.
Paint and supplies: $8. Laminate flooring: $100. Hookie-do-dad tool: $10. (actual money out of pocket today: $0 - it was all gift cards!).
Feeling awesome about laying flooring all by myself: Priceless!
Marcia
Laminate flooring is having a great demand these days. Though there are number of flooring options are available but the laminate flooring is having its own importance and preferred by many people. Buy Blinds in Dubai
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