The Floor: Day Two

At the concert =)

After our grueling day finishing the floor in the master bedroom, we headed to a concert in Central Park to see the Black Keys and Foo Fighters. It was amazing! I was exhausted! 

Room number two was the guest room and was slightly more complicated in layout. We have a HUGE (8x7') closet that I wanted to install flooring in as well. The previous tenants painted the closet floor black (eye roll here). Why do people do things like this? 

First we needed to remove the poorly installed shelves. Who ever installed these bad boys were screw gun happy and used about three coats of paint too many. 

Glenn and JD used our screw guns on the reverse setting to remove the screws. When they were done we had a cup full of various size and colors. The wood was various thickness and quality and depth.  You would think at this point in the game I would naturally assume that everything in this house will be backwards.

For the moment, that middle piece of shelving unit is going to hold James' tools in our larger than necessary utility closet. (Pictures to follow)

Can you see the angled corners?

Installing the underlayment became a piece of cake, although cutting it to fit the closet was a challenge (We cut it with adhesive side facing down and when we turned it over it didn't fit because it was not symmetrical  Oops!) 

James chalking the inside closet wall

We used a chalk line to fine the center of the room and measured out from there to make a straight and square line against the closet wall. We did this because the wall behind the closet is not square and we wanted the rows throughout the room to be layed square. If we didn't do this we would ran the risk of getting to the end of the room and having to install a piece of laminate that looks more like a triangle then a square. Also, chalkers are awesome. Its like a measuring tape, but instead of a metal strip with numbers on it its a piece of string with blue chalk on it. You flick the string and you have a straight bright blue line to work from. 

To lay the first row the boys did an incredible amount of measuring and cutting to fit the laminate in the triangle corners of the closet.  James had to use some kind of grown-up protractor because the sides of the closet come in on an angle. You seriously have to see this piece of work to believe it. In order to keep the 1/4" space from shifting as James hammered in the corners the boy stood on the installed laminate. 

For the rest of the room we used the same process as Day One. This room was a piece of cake after we finished the closet and we actually finished quickly with almost an entire box of laminate. We purchased an extra 10% but really managed to use a lot of cut pieces in other sections of the floor. If our rooms were longer and we had been forced to use more full pieces (we only used one full board per row) we wouldn't have as much left. 

Sign, sealed, delivered. 

Before we installed the last piece we signed it and put the date. 



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