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100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care...
Ok, so I was up till about 3:30 last night whacking boards... Its starting to look pretty good. Finally have a living room floor. Woo hoo.
Now I can get my TV and crap out of my garage and get started on car projects!
Happy memorial day everyone.
| | Reply » 100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care... |
Very nice. The bamboo looks great. Whacking boards until 3:30am? I bet your neighbors love you. 
I can relate though, I'm still in the process of installing my new Cherry hardwood. My wife loves the darker woods, so I couldn't go any lighter, but Cherry is so damn hard it's very difficult to work with. So far I have ~700sq/ft of the 1300sq/ft total finished. Basically I have completed all of the bedrooms and the hallway. Living,Dining and Kitchen are next. I'll try to find a couple pics when I get home.
| | Reply » 100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care... |
Make sure you get that swiffer with the spray bottle on it. I think dark woods look awesome, but they show dirty really easy. Swiffer is the easiest thing I have found that works.
I dont know how much I have done, but I run into a problem, I cant get the nailer in on the last three rows because there is no room. Guess I gotta nail those by hand. This is going to suck.
| | Reply » 100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care... |
We use both the swiffer and the new hardwood cleaner/conditioner from OrangeGlo. Both products work great. The wife likes the swiffer since she can just throw away the pads when done. The OrangeGlo has better pads that are machine washable and a nice cleaner/conditioner that really makes the floor shine. However, since the pads must be washed when done, we only use this once a month after cleaning with the swiffer.
I know what you mean about the last 3 rows, they are indeed the most difficult. The trick I use is to pre-drill the wood at a 45 angle, just as the nailer would using a bit slightly smaller than the nail to prevent splitting. 6d nails are the recommended size. I also apply a little glue in the groove to keep the boards tight. The predrilling works great in that the nails don’t stick out as far which gives you that little bit of extra room to get a hammer strike on the nail. You’ll probably bend a few in the process, but with patience you can get them all done.
As far as getting the boards tight, leverage is your friend. I have a long prybar/screwdriver (~3ft long) that I just jam into the subfloor with my 5lb hammer and then pry the wood tight. As I get closer to the wall, I end up using my nail puller with a scrap piece of wood that spans roughly 3 wall studs to allow me something to leverage against. The last row is glued and face nailed with the air nailer. If you can get the nails close to the wall, you can cover most of them up with your baseboard molding. Any remaining nails can be filled with putty.
Here's a crummy picture, but it's all I could find at the moment. The house is much further along now (this pic dates from Dec'04) but you get the idea.
| | Reply » 100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care... |
So I took my wife to Lowe's today in her E46 (there we go. Now our conversation involves BMW so it is not 100% OT any more  ). She saw the bamboo flooring and went all goo-goo-gah-gah over it. Now she wants me to replace the carpet in the family room with a bamboo floor. Questions:
1) Did you use something as underlayment or did you install the new wood right on top of the subfloor?
2) Did you use planks of the same length? or did you mix them up? According to the info at Lowe's, these come in 3 feet and 6 feet lengths.
3) Did you run into any other difficulties besides nailing the last few boards as you have mentioned?
4) Since you talked about nail, I assume glue was not involved in the process, right?
Thanks.
| | Reply » 100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care... |
First off, Lowes will be much more expensive than anywhere else just about. I paid $2.85 a square foot. Thats probably on the low end because I buy so much flooring for work they threw me a bone, but I would shop around.
I have two layers of plywood over my garage, so its getting nailed right to that. No big deal there. All of my planks are 3 feet by about 3 inches.
As far as difficulties, sometimes the planks dont want to fit tight, so you gotta pound them in. I am using a manual nailer, so it does push the boards back and in when you hit them. 14 bucks a day at home depot. So its turning out pretty nice. The problem is that I just got too darn tired to finish. Its seriously hard work.
You can glue, over concrete or something, its recommended. Nailing is just better for me with the wood subfloor.
I did the whole room from 7 pm to 3 am. So its not too hard, just alot of work. I was so tired when I stopped that my legs were literally shaking.
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100% OT Just gotta tell someone, even if you dont care...