Monday, March 3, 2014

Downstairs Bedroom: We Have Floors!

Originally we had these beautiful hardwood floors in our downstairs bedroom. The only problem was the one room, used to be two rooms and when we ripped up the carpet we found that a huge section in the middle needed to be patched.

ripping out carpet, carpet, DIY, reno, bedroom redo, carpet pad, patching wood floors

So we tried. And failed. It wasn't on our part, but the boards were not even, thus causing such a large gap that there is no way we could have fixed it without ripping out everything and starting over.

sub floors, flooring, painting floors, ply wood, plywood, bedroom reno, diy

I didn't want to spend that much money. All I wanted was a simple fix to get the room functional again. Then I had the plan for plywood flooring. Once the hubs did some research we found that plywood would have cost us almost the same price as hardwood flooring. We talked about carpet, but we still would have had to lay plywood down and we don't have the funds right now for carpet. We were bickering back and forth on which would be the best option, and I want something cute and different, but sometimes the hubs has a hard time seeing my vision for a room. So rather then sit around and talk about it we went to Menards to see what we could find for our options. Walking up and down the isles I thought we were going to have to choke down the cost of plywood...then I saw this:



The hubs wasn't impressed with my idea. Especially seeing the type of under lament I wanted to use. So we walked over to the carpet area of the store and looked at their selection. It was nice but not what I wanted. So after some convincing I swayed the hubs to try my way, and if it turns out terrible we can save our money for some carpet next year.

We bought 10, but only ended up using 7, sheets of Dakota 5/8" x 49" x 97" Industrial-Grade Particleboard,which my selling point to the hubs was that it was smooth, and stated that it is used for under lament flooring for carpet. Plus the price was about $25-$30 per sheet less then plywood. Bam. Sold. So, then came the task of trying to get these 10 sheets home. We grabbed a cart and got two sheets on it when I figured that one of two things was going to happen during this process:

1. We are going to do this on our own and want to kill each other because they are HEAVY and my arms aren't the strongest right now.

or...

2. Have it delivered and save time, energy and money in the long run.

We went with option two. To have the 10 sheets delivered the next day it was about a $60 charge and we managed to have the driver bring the flooring inside for us. We thought that was GREAT because we would have had to rent a truck from Menards to transport the flooring to our house. $20.00 (for 75 minutes). Then we would have had to put gas back in the truck. ($5-$10) We would have had to take all the flooring, load it up, pay for it, load it in the truck that had a ton of snow in the bed of it, drive the truck to our house, unload the truck and bring all the flooring inside, drive the truck back and return it. All I could think was that process was going to end in divorce or jail. So in all actuality, the time and stress saved was worth it, plus it was only an extra $30 over what we would have paid to do it ourselves. Worth. It.

So a few days later, the hubs started installing the flooring.







And this is a view with all the flooring in:


I love it. It wasn't too difficult to install. We started by laying down the entire boards, dry fitting them together like a puzzle, making any cuts that needed and continuing with the next board. All I have to say is that room is the PERFECT width. Exactly five boards wide and we had to use two more for the narrow section that was left between where the boards stopped and the wall.We were happy campers and the room is starting to take shape.

The hubs went and screwed in all the boards then we started on filling in all the holes with this:

DAP® Quart Flexible Floor Patch and Leveler
source

So far it has been a pretty smooth process. I'm filling in the holes, then using a sanding block to smooth things out then filling again. I was these floors to be perfect and we are going to be working on other things in the room before we paint the floors so we don't mess them up and make more work for ourselves.

Right now we are hoping that the weather changes in the next week or so because otherwise we will be installing windows in a SUPER cold room but in the mean time we are starting the wainscoting!!!

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