Well, this weekend was the big weekend. After more than a month of having our entire living room and dining room stuffed into the dining room, we finally took the big plunge.
The whole project started out with us purchasing the 3/4 inch thick, 2 1/4 inch wide, pre-finished oak hard wood. We stacked the ten boxes in the dining room. Then emptied the entire living room. I believe we took a trip up to Teresa's family that weekend and got the floor stapler and staples from Teresa's brother. That was the first weekend. The next weekend we sliced up the carpeting into 30 inch wide strips, rolled, tied and threw the bundles onto the front porch. I ripped out the ceramic tile in front of the front door. I pulled all the cables, speaker and coax, that I had run through the basement so that they would be in more convenient locations. We found some scary looking old sheet linoleum under the carpeting. That was weekend II. After getting the linoleum and mastic tested for asbestos, negative, Teresa and I played hazmat team. We sealed the living room off from the rest of the house. We wore full plastic coveralls with booties, hoods, and gloves. We put on dust masks that were rated for asbestos, and attacked the linoleum. It came up in huge sheets and we broke it into more manageable sizes and slid the pieces into super heavy duty contractor bags. Then sealed the bags and dumped them on the front porch. Whatever the mastic and/or backing of the linoleum was, it made you itch like fiberglass and that is why we took the precautions. We then used rags and scrapers and by wetting and scraping the wood we were able to scrape up the vast majority of backing and glue on the rough pine planks of the actual floor. That was weekend C. Weekend four we went winter back packing in the Laurel Highlands outside of Pittsburgh. The snow shoeing was great. Um, somewhere along the line I also spent several nights chiseling the tiles out of the floor of the fireplace, cutting off the old disconnected gas line, and chiseling off the plaster from the one wall of the fireplace to see what was behind it. The right wall and back of the fire box definitely appears to be brick or stone, but the left wall sounded kind of hollow when you tapped on it. It appears to be a piece of cement board that was plastered over. I need to get a chimney sweep or other person of knowledge to tell me if that is fireproof enough or if I need to do something else to rate it for high heat, but not open flame. I spent one evening laying in the first couple of pieces of floor board in preparation. But, I didn't like the way it came out, it wasn't straight so I ripped it all out the next night. Teresa and I spent quite a long time trying to figure out what straight means. Are these two walls co-linear? Does space time warp around my living room? Anyway, we eventually bit the bullet and laid down those first five short courses that are inside the doorway between the living room and dining room. I, not having a table saw, used my router to rip off the groove from the back edges of the first course of boards that would be near the wall in the living room. I had to be careful since as you move along that wall, you get to the doorway opening, then to the right half of the wall. So, I didn't want to rip the groove off of the part of the board that would be mating up with the last board in the doorway. It actually all worked out perfectly. This past Saturday we got working for real. We spent a lot of time hand nailing the first couple of courses. The very first course, we face nailed and tung nailed. Then we tung nailed the next two courses. Then it was time to break out the compressor and floor stapler. At first Teresa was nailing and I was fitting and trimming boards. However, I was holding up the operation trying to select and fit boards and make sure the seams weren't lining up. Sightlings can do nearly everything faster and Teresa could just look at a few boards, and the next board position and grab the right one. So, eventually I took the nailer and Teresa started fitting and trimming. We cruised along pretty quickly. I screwed up a few times with the nailer though. The nailer digs into the leading edge of the board a bit and so you had to be very careful to slide the nailer forward first before lifting it or sliding it sideways. If you lift it you tend to splinter the edge of the board a bit. I did this in a few places but after getting yelled at, I got the clue. We got about half way across the room before calling it an evening. Sunday, we started up again. The only hitch came when we got to the end of the fireplace. The first board that extended past the edge of the fireplace now had nothing behind it so when I nailed it, it slightly twisted the board out of alignment. We didn't notice this until the next course of boards went in. We ripped out several boards, not an easy task since you don't want to rip the tungs off the preceding boards. I then tried to be more aware and careful and laid new boards in. Same result. So we ripped them out again. Then I decided to put a cleat in on one side of the board, and first nail the board from the fireplace side, (the back edge of the board), then pull the cleat and nail it in from the front edge. This worked perfectly and the board lay straight and true. Then the last piece had to be notched out around the edge of the mantel and that took a bit of work with the router and a chisel, but it looks beautiful. We then got back to cruising and approached the dreaded cast iron radiator. I got pretty close, but that last course I squeezed in had a few misfires where I had to pull the staple out since it didn't fire hard enough to drive it all the way in. We loose fit boards up to the radiator and stapled in a few boards to one side of it. That was last weekend. Teresa and I both took Monday off work and we cleaned the living room, ran a bunch of errands, and moved all the furniture back into the living room. I am currently sweating over how to make the cuts for the area in the entry way where the ceramic tile will go. Imagine a rectangle with one corner cut off, but not all the way over to the adjacent corner. We laid down the boards long so I can cut them out with the circ saw in the proper pattern, but I am just sweating it because it has to be done right the first time, no second chances. Anyway, we have the house mostly back together and after an under cover dumpster run, all the trash is off the front porch as well. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. 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