Me and My Big Mouth

Each year my wife and I sit down and pick one or two things that we want to fix and or change around our home. Some years it can be something major like the year I built my shop building. Other years it might be a small as new paint and fixtures in a bathroom.

Well, this year it was new carpet for our living room/hall. It had been getting rather ratty looking for some time and really needed to go. So back in February we were looking at various carpet samples in Lowe's near our house when I had this bright idea, which I was foolish enough to actually speak out loud.

You know our living room is a vaulted beamed ceiling with a  large brick fireplace at one end so real hardwood floor would look really good on the floor.

Yes, I said it out loud and of course she heard it. One of the problems with being married 38 years and having a reputation as being above average handy with wood is that she assumes if it's wood I can do it. Plus, they even had the one we both liked on sale.

So,  verfied the measurements and one weekend nearly killed myself dragging out the old NASTY carpet. And i thought it looked bad right side up, never ever look at it after its been yanked out.

Underneath the subfloor was in pretty good shape, just one area to level near the entry and a search and destroy mission to deal with any possible squeaks and I'm ready to start putting down 3/4" thick solid oak flooring

I knew the hallway would be the hard part so I started there and worked the flooring back toward the front door which is off the right side of this picture. with everything lining up down the hallway the rest of the room should be easy.

Now I am about half way across the main room. The black stuff on the floor is heavy weight roofing paper to help prevent squeaks.

Getting close to the finish line. It gets tricky when you come up against a stone or brick surface so I'm going to chisel out the bottom row of mortar and tuck the last row under the brick. I hope!

Years ago I had put this natural slate pad by the back door to help with wet feet coming in from the hot tub so I wanted it to stay but given that this would be a high moisture area I needed to do something to help the oak stay flat under these conditions. The answer was to picture frame it and lock it in place with its own tongue and grooves. Plus I think it looks more finished this was.

The last detail was to cover up half the beautiful wood floor with furniture and an area  rug. Our dog Quinn seems to approve though.

One last detail. I have discovered that it easier to get around on crutches on hardwood than carpet So that's a plus in one sense.