Things are progressing nicely with the house. It seems like when I’m ready to report on what we’ve just recently done, I realize that I haven’t said anything about the last bit of work we completed…so here’s some photos of some of our laminate flooring install.

We tore all the carpet up, and spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the best way to install the flooring. Overall its really an easy process. However, I was bound and determined to make things as difficult as possible. We are installing the flooring in the front room, down the hall, and through the master bedroom. After a lot of planning, I put together these fancy corners. Here’s how it was looking.

Fancy Corner

Interlocking

See how the diagonal joint comes out, instead of the boards just laying straight? Looked pretty cool. Unfortunately, doing this had some poor consequences. There is one location about 7″ long at each joint that doesn’t interlock, and when we put weight on these locations, the flooring warps and gaps emerged. Not good…would lead to a lot of wear, and just look bad in a few years I’m sure.

Gaps!

So, the boards went straight. Ended up tearing out a lot of flooring and doing things several times to get it back to the way I should have done it in the first place. So the corner went straight, and cleaned up really nice. Not as ornate, but sure looks good. The hall went quickly after I made the corners and cut in the doors/closets.

Final Stretch

Hallway Corner

Almost done

This last weekend we finished up the hall bathroom, and completed the flooring in the master bedroom. Minus about 6 boards, which I came up short of course. I’ll order them and slap them in sometime next week. I can’t believe the difference between the crappy carpet and the laminate wood. Looks a ton better. Here’s the hall, before and after.

Hall Carpet

Down the Hall

Fun stuff. Next up is baseboards…then we’ll move on to getting the backyard landscaped. Never ending….