Here comes the floor!

So thanks to Nate my day started at about 5:30am, and as I was to find out later in the day, it might have been better for the both of us if the little guy had slept in some more. But as we were up with the crack of dawn, we ran and got some coffee and doughnuts (chocolate milk for Nate), then came back to the house were I jumped right into the task of laying hardwood floors in the teardrop.

As I mentioned in the last post, I decided to go with 'utility' hardwood flooring. It's solid red oak, but with 'utility' grade you get a mixed bag of cuts - everything from broken pieces, cross grain cuts, knots, odd coloring and just about everything you could think of that would cause a board to get kicked out by those quality inspectors. The up side is that it's dirt cheap - about 80 cents a square foot - and for this project I could live with some of the lesser issues. First up was the sorting of the wood.

I built 3 piles - good, okay and, well ... firewood. As the teardrop floorplan would have over half of the flooring covered by either the bunk frame/cabinet or the futon, I'd probably make out okay with the 'okay' wood installed in these areas.

Above is the 'good' pile. I couldn't see much wrong with these. They were mostly short pieces of about 12 inches long, but there were some really nice long pieces in there too.

Here is the 'okay' pile. I found some off color pieces, cross grain cuts, a few small knots and tiny bug holes, and some nice pieces that had rounded cuts at the very ends (figured I could clip off the bad ends).

And last is the firewood pile. Mostly splits and knots and missing tongues/grooves. As expected it was about 20 to 25 percent of the batch. Sorting took some time as I had to sit down and inspect each piece.

Next task was putting in the underlayment. This is a thin foam sheet that's coated on one side with a moisture barrier. The hope is that not only will it smooth out the subfloor, it will also keep any moisture from working its way into the bottom of the hardwoods - unlikely though given the thorough coating of asphalt emulsion on the underside of the subfloor, but better safe than sorry.

As the sun came up, so did the heat and humidity. By the time the underlayment was in - about 9 am in the morning, the temps were already above 80 degrees. With poor air circulation in the garage I was really feeling it, and sweating bullets too.

Now to nail in the hardwood. Given the mishmash of lengths, the picking and mixing of pieces was fairly easy. I ended up only having to trim the final piece of each run, and in most cases the cutoffs were just a few inches. I'm using 1.25" brads in my air nailer. This is probably a little shorter than normal but I didn't want the brads to go all the way through the bottom. And aside from just a few misfires, they appear to be holding well. I'm nailing perpendicular to the top faces along the walls, and at roughly a 45 degree angle back into the tongue edges. It took a couple rows to get a good feel for how high up on the tongue I should fire in the brad - and had to go back and use a nail set on a bunch of them. I found that nailing a little lower on the tongue worked better, as the brad would end up setting with a nice countersink, and I could get a better bite on the subfloor. I don't know if this is the best way but as it's working I'm going with it.

Only thing is it's a slow process. By noon I was feeling the onset of heat exhaustion - mostly due to how out of shape I appear to be! I had only gotten about 10 square feet done. My folks were coming down for a visit, so I decided to take a break, get another shower and wait until the evening to resume. After lunch both Nate and I took a nap for a few hours. That helped. By 5pm I was ready to get back into it.

The evening progress seemed quicker. Temps and humidity were less, but I also set a fan in the doorway to help with the circulation. I was also keeping to a better routine with less wasted movement. At 8:30pm I hit my midway mark on the floor and called it a night ...

The pieces slid in along the walls are to give it the proper spacing for expansion. Walking on it feels solid and level, and I'm no longer hearing the creaking when walking on the subfloor. I think it's going to go in well and so far I'm pleased with the flooring choice.

Tomorrow I hope to finish laying in the other half - we'll see as I really haven't gotten any of the weekend chores done (groan)!