Flooring, the start...

We really didn't have a plan for the floor when we bought the house. We were originally thinking of staining the concrete since we knew it was a slab house. After tearing out the carpet and linoleum, we realized the concrete wasn't really in any condition to be stained. There was old black adhesive or sealer on the concrete, and it didn't come off with any amount of scraping. We could have sanded or re-poured, but neither of us wanted stained concrete that bad.

We had ruled out carpet, laminate, and tile earlier based on both of our preferences in flooring, so that left wood. We considered bamboo flooring but got gunshy because of some of the reviews we were reading online. Our research led us to BR-111 Triangulo engineered hardwood (we chose 3/8th inch Brazilian cherry). We had seen the 5/16 version at Lowe's, but it had a thinner wear layer and was still pricey. We ended up purchasing from HardwoodInstaller.com. They had good prices, provided curbside delivery (though we opted for pick-up at a freight terminal), and had good tips on their site. Overall, the experience was very smooth and we had no damaged wood in the process.

Our plan was to float the floor over the concrete with a 3-in-1 underlayment. We used Titebond 2 glue for piecing the wood together and a pullbar for fitting the wood together in tight places. Other than that, some rubber mallets, blocks of 2x4, and rags for cleaning the floor were all that we ended up using.

We started in the guest bedroom and aligned the flooring to the previously mentioned grid lines left over from the linoleum tile. Since the linoleum covered the whole house, we were quickly able to determine that the house was square, so if we kept our wood to the same lines, we wouldn't have squareness problems (caused by the house, at least). We didn't really have a clue about laying out a pattern, so my dad and I dry-fitted about 4 feet of wood in a few configurations until we got the hang of it. We varied the starting wall every four rows and began the flooring from the front of the house. The first room took about six hours to complete (the smallest room we were doing...).

As we were nearing our deadline to move out of our apartment, Ellen and I brought our bed over to the house and had our first night's stay in this little room. It's cozy, but we had motivation to get the master bedroom floored. The flooring was the last project my parents helped with before heading back north, so we were on our own to get in a rhythm with the 900 other feet that needed to be covered.