14_First Installment Of Hardwood Flooring

My husband’s specialty is installing hardwood flooring; so he couldn’t wait to start such task. We bought unfinished hardwood flooring pretty early, on June 29^th; and yes, I had to help him lifting the 24 bundles of them. We had to lift them 3 times: from the store to the shopping cart, from the shopping cart to the van, and unload them from the van to our garage.

24 bundles of hardwood flooring, and yes, I had to lift them too.

Chafed Hands

These flooring didn’t have smooth edges, of course, and I didn’t wear any gloves to lift them. I ended up having chafed hands L it felt horrible, my hands were dry and in pain. I guessed the pain from the chafed hands was accumulation from all the works before, because I didn’t have gloves. Upon this, I asked my husband to buy me working gloves, and on June 30^th finally I had working gloves. They really helped my works afterwards. I didn’t have to feel afraid of rough edges, splinters, or even sticking up nails, because my hands were well covered. I felt like I could use all my power to lifting things; before, it seemed I restrained myself because I didn’t want to hurt my hands so much. What a difference a pair of gloves made!  

Finally, I had my own working gloves. 

Filling Up The Gaps From The Walls

We didn’t work on hardwood flooring until July 1^st after we finished installing the drywalls. And even though we would love to replace all the floors in the kitchen and dining room, we shouldn’t work on them right away. In order to make the floors look uniformed and seamless, we had to fill up the gaps from the previous walls that started from the living room. In filling up the gaps, we couldn’t just put new hardwood flooring in the gaps; that would not make the transition seamless. We had to take out the flooring around the gaps as well, and then rearranged the flooring in continuous row.

The gap near the door before we took out the surrounding hardwood flooring, while the gap below had the surrounding hardwood flooring being taken out.

After we took out the hardwood flooring around the gaps, I had to clean the open floor from any dust and debris. Here, again, my Cross Fit trainings had prepared me. Even though I used an industrial vacuum cleaner, and not just a broom, still I had to squat and bend a lot to ensure all the crevices were clear.

Next step, we put plastic underlayment, a layer between subfloors and hardwood flooring. The underlayment provided insulation and protection from any crawling creatures underneath. Earlier we thought we could finish putting the hardwood flooring, but apparently we overestimated our energy level, as always. We finished the day after covering all the gaps with plastic underlayment, and that was already around 10 PM. I ended up, not only feeling tired and sore, but also feeling very sweaty and sticky because I also did lawn mowing outside.

Plastic underlayment was installed before the installation of hardwood flooring.

Killing Time Activity: Lawn Mowing

As my husband doing the hardwood flooring, there was not much that I can help, so I decided to try out the new battery run lawn mower. I never mowed any lawn before, as I never had any big yard in my house in Indonesia. Beside, back in Indonesia, it wasn’t common to mow using the lawnmowers; in general, we used sickles. So first, I had to learn on operating the lawnmower. The machine weighed 72lbs or 32kg and I had to push it around.

Me, mowing the lawn.

After feeling confident on moving the lawnmower around, I started mowing at the front yard that has total area of around 210’ or 19.5m². I didn’t think it was a tiring task, but doing it in a hot and humid weather made my sweat running pretty hard. It took me around 75 minutes to finish the job, so it was a pretty good workout. My shirt was all wet and I didn’t bring any spare shirt L. This was the sweatiest and stickiest day for me.

Expanding Hardwood

We woke up with full body sore on July 2^nd. We had to drag ourselves at 10AM and my husband started to lay hardwood flooring directly. Meanwhile, I mowed the backyard lawn. I didn’t know whether the terrain was less flat than the front yard or I was just tired. I couldn’t finish the job at once. I had to take a break from the 84^oF/32^oC heat even though the back yard was smaller than the front yard.

Meanwhile my husband had trouble in installing the hardwood flooring; the wood was expanding. This might be caused by the younger age of the wood, so they were still growing. Another possibility was the wood had been in storage for a long time, especially during summer time, so they had expanded. The best time to install hardwood flooring was after they were being cut, so they didn’t have time to expand.

In the end, we had to leave the floor with the last row uninstalled. The remaining space was smaller than the hardwood pieces. It was late already and we didn’t have more energy to trim hardwood pieces, so we just went home.

Left: the closed gaps in the living room and the open one between the kitchen and dining room. Right: The last remaining row had smaller space than the hardwood pieces.

On June 3^rd, our energy level hit really low. We felt very exhausted. Yet we pushed ourselves to finish the last row of hardwood flooring. My husband let me nailed the last strip. We then rewarded ourselves with walking around to different stores, looking for ideas for kitchen cabinets. 

Left: I nailed the last strip. The gaps in the living room were all covered with no trace of previous walls.