Walking Away

Well, I'm having some fits of rage related to the quarter round so I'm going to walk away from it for a while and move on to a new project.  You see, apparently carbonized bamboo is REALLY hard.  I tried using a nail gun to nail it in place but the wood BENT several of the nails and messed up the finish of the wood.  I then tried to drill pilot holes and hand nail the wood.  That did fine until I tried to sink the nails and again, I messed up the finish of the wood.  The nice man at Lowe's told me to try glue...still no good.  It would have worked if my walls were actually straight!  I even called an installer and it was going to cost me more for him to install it than if I just bought new quarter round.  So, I'm walking away from that part of the project for a while.  I had a breakdown over it yesterday and then again today.  It's just not worth getting emotional over.  I decided to start working on my bedroom instead.  I finally moved the couch out of my room (hallelujah!) and I'm in the process of evacuating the rest of the furniture (I'm writing this post while eating lunch... PBJ makes everything better).  I'm hoping to get the carpet pulled up today and tape off the trim.  I'll paint tomorrow while watching football then maybe I can start the floor by Monday.  This room is fairly square and there aren't as many doors so I'm hoping it will go quickly (deep breath.....).

1/4

I finished laying the hardwood today.  I had to get a bit "creative" with the last two boards but, thankfully, my imagination was in my corner and the floor looks great.  I had a video to upload but I think it's too big.

This is the mitre saw I borrowed.  What a life saver.  I can't imagine where I would be if I were still making manual cuts.  

I hate linoleum

When I remodeled my bathroom, I had to pull up all the linoleum and scrape the concrete in order to remove all the adhesive. This job SUCKED!  It was backbreaking and took several days to complete.

Today, I started pulling up the Pergo in the kitchen and, much to my dismay, I found linoleum.  YUCK!  I don't know if I am going to have to work on all the adhesive again or if I can just put my underlayment over the adhesive.  I'm guessing that I'll have to remove the adhesive.  Grrrr!

My new tool

I had such a hard time cutting my floors to fit around the door jamb in the hallway that I gave in and bought a jamb saw.  It worked so well.  I used it on the coat closet in the foyer and now I won't have to make so many crazy cuts to get the pieces to fit right.

I'm also really close to totally changing my mind about the kitchen.  I really think I might like to have brick floors instead of hardwood.  I could use the extra hardwood in the master bedroom.. the rooms are about the same size.  Who knows?  I seems to change my mind about alot of things multiple times in a day.  LOL!

UGGGGG.....!!!!

Today was a really bad day for DIY.  It took me almost 5 hours to properly cut a board so that it would fit under the door casing.  I will not include pictures but suffice it to say, that dang closet is FINISHED!  Now on to the rest of the hallway.

I'm Exhausted!

I've been working hard on my floors for the past three days.  My back aches and my knees are bruised (I tried knee pads but wearing them was more uncomfortable than going without).  I've completed the foyer, about 3/4 of the living room, and now I'm contemplating the hallway.  I'm kinda stuck with the first of FIVE doors I'll have to conquer in the hallway.  It all involves some crazy cuts I'll have to make and I just didn't have the brainpower at 6:30 PM yesterday to tackle it.  I have four days of work ahead of me so I'll have to ponder it again on Monday.

Ahhh.... feels good to have at least STARTED to lay my floors.  It took me about 10 boards to finally get the hang of it.  After that, it went fairly quickly.  I'm hoping to knock out a good part of it tomorrow and Wednesday.