18_Continuation of Hardwood Flooring Installment

After dumping the construction debris on July 15^th, we went back to the house to continue installing the hardwood flooring. This time, I could help. I looked for and laid down the wood strips one row at a time, and then my husband nailed them. It saved time. Before, my husband had to look for one wood strip, position and adjusted it, nailed it, and repeated. Looking for a wood strip might take time because the woods had to be arranged harmoniously between long and short strips. Not only along the rows, the strips also had to look harmoniously down the rows. Two strip ends shouldn’t be close together in two adjacent rows. They should, at least, located 6 inch from each other. So dividing the tasks really speeded up the process.

Left: Hardwood flooring installment reached the door line. Right: An opened bundle of hardwood flooring on top of the installed ones.

The challenge was the same as before, the arching wood; they were not easy to nail. When we found such kind of wood, my husband would stronghold them straight while I nailed them.

We kept working until 5.30PM when we had to stop abruptly. The nail gun was broken. This nail gun had served my husband for more than 10 years, so it was time for it to retire. In addition, we had been working since morning, we got tired already; and the daylights were shimmering down due to the cloudy weather. It was time to stop working. We went back to the apartment; but managed to stop by at Lowes to buy a new nail gun.

The new nail gun.

On the next day, we continued working on hardwood flooring since the morning. In the beginning we had to adapt with the new nail gun. The nails didn’t come out evenly and the gun jammed once. But after we adapted to it, we could speed up.

We installed the wood pretty fast until the space became smaller towards the end. The space to hold the wood strips in position, especially the arched ones, was not enough. We had to maneuver ourselves to nail the strips. Towards the end, we adjusted our tasks; I nailed the strips while my husband held them on position. For the last row, the space was even narrower than the width of a strip. My husband had to chop each strip individually to fit into the available space.

Left: Installing hardwood flooring. Right: Installing the last piece of hardwood strip.

We finished at 8PM after working for 11 hours. During this time, we only had two small sandwiches for each. We were extremely hungry after work. Upon this, we didn’t bother to clean up; we rushed to a Mexican restaurant nearby to reward ourselves.

Left: The new installed hadwood flooring. Right: Two bundles of leftovers of hardwood flooring.

By finishing the hardwood-flooring installment, our house renovation goals were achieved. We had an open space that connects the living room, kitchen, and dining room with uniformed walls and floors. After this, we were ready for the next milestone, which was House Beautification. This meant, we put something new in the house to make it pretty, not necessarily improving the function. Examples for this were paintings, light and kitchen cabinet installments, and putting appliances. Just keep on visiting this website to see the latest story from us. Happy Reading!