Nursery Room - Installing Bamboo Floors

Yep, you read that right!  We got the floors in this weekend...Woo Hoo!!!  It's really about 90% done in there flooring wise, so although it isn't complete, I'll take it!

We started on the floors Saturday morning.  Well, Chris started on the floors.  I've mentioned my lack of patience a million times here, so it should come as no surprise that I have zero patience when it comes to laying plastic down.  Chris took over laying down the water vapor proof sub flooring (basically a thick roll of plastic) while I went outside and worked on another project.  It actually took the better part of two hours to get all of this laid out smoothly and taped down.  Good job Chris!!

Then we analyzed for what seemed like another 2 hours (not really, but it sure felt that way!) to figure out how we were going to lay our pattern.  We were beyond ecstatic when we got the entire first row done.

Especially because we started with the hardest side of the room...the closet!  We broke out one of our new tools, our brand new router, a Christmas gift from my Dad and T. Mom to make the perfect cut for here.  I love playing with new tools!!  We cut up paint sticks and inserted them along the walls to allow the floors to expand so that we don't have buckling later.  I laid this initial row.

Then the neighbors came calling.  While I was outside earlier working on my other project, their tree guy had come down and asked if I'd like to take some of the oak wood that they were cutting down to use for fire wood.  I told him that we'd love to, and that we'd just come down when they were done and load it into the truck.

When the neighbor came down, he asked if we were using the wood to build a fire or a house, because his tree guys were wrapping things up and there was a ton of wood, lots of them over 24 inches in width.  Ha! Suuure...that's a great idea to leave for a 6 1/2 month pregnant lady and her hubby to haul.  Sheesh!

So, we took a 4 hour break, loaded up the back of Chris's truck with the fire wood we wanted, and then hauled the fire wood to the back yard and stacked it up.

None of this existed prior to Saturday afternoon.  Not exactly the break we were hoping for in the middle of laying our floors, but free good wood is hard to come by!

By the time we called it quits on Saturday night, we had only made it through laying 6 rows of flooring.  For the last two rows, we figured out an efficient system that worked for us.  Chris laid the floors and banged them together, and I made the cuts outside on the miter saw.  The hard concrete floors, my ever growing pregnant belly and aching pregnant back that don't like to repeatedly get up and down, and the loud noise that we made by banging the floors together were all a bit much for me.  Power tools - more up my pregnant ally!!

This is where we started off Sunday morning.  I setup at our 'station' outside, and Chris hammered away laying down the floors in here.

You can see my other project in the background here.  While I waited for Chris to finish up laying a row and tell me the measurements for my next cuts, I worked on my other project.  Multi-tasking at it's finest!  This was setup right outside of the nursery bedroom window.

Here's a shot of Chris hammering away the very last full piece into place.  We used a scrap piece of flooring with the cork side towards the good piece of flooring, and beat on it with a hammer until they locked in.

He also kept his back leg on the other end of the board than he was hammering.  This helped keep the board more level and made it so it'd slide in easier.  These were actually not very easy to get to lock together...you had to bang them pretty hard and keep a good amount of pressure on them.

Finally, by yesterday afternoon, we had floors!!!

Before doing any floor installation, I normally would've removed the baseboards.  We did it will all of our old house remodels, and I just think it really makes for a more clean and finished look.  However, the previous owners of this house did not simply nail the baseboards on.  Oh no, that would've been entirely too easy.  They GLUED the baseboards on, making it impossible for us to remove them without destroying them.  And these bad boys are the nice 5'' tall baseboards, so there's so way I'm wasting those!

We went to Home Depot yesterday afternoon and got the quarter round molding to install around where the floor meets the baseboards.  We're hoping to give it a coat of shiny white paint and install them after work one day this week, and then the floors can be 100% done!  We were entirely too tired by the time we got home yesterday evening.

So what do you think?  The room has gone from looking like this :

To this:

In just a few short long short weeks!!  We installed the window, painted the ceiling, installed the fan, painted the walls and closet, painted the trim, and now installed the floors!  After this week, we finally should be able to get some actual nursery decorations going up in here!  Woo Hoo!!  What do you guys think of the transformation so far?!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  Hope your day is filled with lots and lots of love!

Want to see all of the nursery progress so far?  Just click here to see the transformation!

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