Aloha Vacation, Aloha New Floors: a house log

See “Aloha” means both “Goodbye” and “Hello,” so… yeah… buh bye Hawaii and hello half-done cork floors. We are back in Richmond (insert forced enthusiasm here – woot?) and we are eager to tell you more about our trip. But we are more eager to dive back into Hands-on and spill all the details about our big cork floor project that we began right before we left (about twenty four hours before we hopped on the plane in fact). Oh and for those who did not drop in on us last week since our little vacation announcement, we in fact did share two posts (along with a giveaway) while we were gone, so you can find those here and here.

We are still recovering from jet lag (and from flying home on a red-eye with a toddler, haha – we will share more on that over on the house Life at some point) but we are quite grateful for our little break to unplug and enjoy some sun and sand. So we will simply update you on as much of the flooring as we have laid (and keep working the nights away until it is done and we can do a full reveal post for ya!). Oh and we will write all about our HI adventures when we have time to sort through about two thousand photos and write all about it – hopefully by the end of this week. But back to the floors. We had originally hoped to fully finish the floors before we left. That was the plan…

We knew the photo crew would finish up on Friday the 17th after three full weeks of shooting in our house (we knew better than to try juggling book shoots + toddler + new floors, so we thought waiting until the book shooting wrapped was the best idea). So since we did not leave for Portland until early on Tuesday morning (the 21st) that meant we’d have Saturday and Sunday to install the floors while Clara napped/was in bed for the night. Then on Monday we’d pack, finish up/proofread all the posts for the following week that we’d share while in Portland, and get ready to leave on Tuesday am. Seemed ideal… ’til we realized on Friday night that we hadn’t let the cork boards acclimate OUT of their boxes for the recommended 48 hours. Cue the sound of a balloon deflating.

Yup, they had sat in the corner of our bedroom in their boxes for months (months!) since we purchased them in October from Lumber Liquidators on clearance. But we hadn’t taken them out to acclimate in all of that time. So sad. We simply did not even think about it. So the above photo depicts the scene in our house on Saturday and Sunday while we literally waited for those folks to acclimate with bated breath. Nothing got installed over the whole weekend. It simply sat there… acclimating (i.e. adjusting to the temperature of the house so any expansion or contracting would happen before putting them in place instead of after- which can make them buckle and warp).

The last minute wait-time did give us a couple of days to read up on the process, though. We have never installed a floor like this, so we referenced how-tos like this and this to get our heads in floor mode. Oh, and we were able to get some of the floor prepped in the meantime, like prying off all of the shoe molding around the room. Since ours is painted over, we used a razor to slice the paint so it would come off cleanly without peeling. With a floating floor you in fact have to leave a gap around the edges (our cork packaging recommended a 5/16″ of an inch space) to give it room to expand or contract with changes in temperature. But when the shoe is reinstalled after the cork goes down it’ll cover that gap.

Another thing we had to do was trim the door molding to accommodate the new cork flooring. Since it’d be a pain in the behind to cut the floors perfectly around every groove in the molding, I learned how to cut a sliver out of the molding instead (so the cork floor could slide right under it for a seamless look). I used one of the techniques that I read about where you lay a hand saw flat against a piece of floor (and underlayment) as your guide and simply saw away. Seemed kinda crazy…

…but it worked!

Once we had all of the shoe took out, the door moldings cut to accommodate the cork that will run under them, and all of the transitions pried up in the doorways, the floor was officially prepped. Oh yeah, and we gave it a good sweep too.

Then once the 48 hour acclimation time was up and the floors were cleaned, the next step was putting down the underlayment. This is the stuff that Lumber Liquidator’s recommended:

There was a slightly cheaper option, but that one was not made from recycled material (boo) and it was slightly thicker (and we hoped the brought in floor height to be as minimal as possible since we had to float it over our existing flooring instead of removing the old vinyl due to the presence of an asbestos liner under it). Thankfully the cork is thin too, so when it is all said and done the cork floor should only be able a quarter of an inch higher than the hardwoods around it, and with some pleasant smooth low-lying transitions it should not make for any annoying toe-stubbing or baby-tripping. We will keep you posted on dealing with those transitions as we get there.

Ok, so being that it was now Monday morning (i.e. less than 24 hours before we left on an 11 day business / pleasure trip), we were scrambling a bit – so our pictures are not as thorough as we’d like. We will do better as we finish up the floors this week (by taking a ton more photos) since we will not be distracted by book photoshoots, cleaning, packing, and Portland-presentation-practicing. But here is a pic that I snapped once we got the underlayment mostly down in one side of the room (it had a sticky strip on the back of it keep it in place). The underlayment does not overlap itself, it is simply laid in strips right next to each other and stuck to the floor with that sticky strip that runs down the side of it. Oh and you can see how I simply used a regular scissors (not Sherry’s good scissors because I know what is good for me) to cut out the underlayment that overlapped the stone fireplace surround (a box cutter also worked well).

To assist with the actual floor installation, we picked up this $16 kit from Home Depot. It came with spacers (to keep that recommended 5/16″ gap around the edge), as well as a pull bar and a tapping block. Those are both to assist hammer the boards into place, but since you do not want to hammer the board directly you use the block as a buffer (you hammer the block which slightly shifts the board so there is not a big gap/seam). And the pull bar helps with the boards closest to the wall. I will take pics of these in action next time so this makes more sense. Promise.

The process was fairly slow going at first, mainly because nearly all of our first few pieces required cuts. But at least it was good to get them out of the way.

Some of the instructions I read suggested cutting with a jigsaw, but I figured my table saw would make straighter cuts so I lugged it up to the carport to make my many (many) cuts more convenient. It worked truly well.

Even after we got around the fireplace, we still had to cut the board at the start of each row (or “course” to use flooring lingo). We staggered each row/course because (1) it makes the whole floating floor stronger by offsetting the joints and (2) it makes it look more like a traditional hardwood floor. My boards were 36″ long, so we offset the courses by 12″ each. See the staggered edge below?

Even with those initial staggered cuts, it was fairly fast snapping in a whole row of whole pieces. In other words: cuts took a lot longer, and snapping whole pieces in was a breeze. I think all-in-all this whole section took us about five hours to do. We hoped to get more done in that time (our initial goal had been to finish the whole behind-the-peninsula section of the kitchen before leaving) but we got distracted by a morning snowstorm, a lunchtime wrap-up meeting with the book photographer, and eventually got caught up trying to pack for Portland and Hawaii (packing for ourselves took ten minutes, but packing for Clara took a little longer – and our flight was so early on Tuesday we could not leave anything for that morning).

But as Sherry mentioned on Friday, having the floor began only makes it easier to get it wrapped up this week. So our new goal is to have pictures of a completed floor by the end of the week (we are in fact gunning for finishing Wednesday night or quite early Thursday morning so we can have the pics up on time for a Thursday morning post). We will be sure to take some time to snap better photos of the actual process too (imagine that!). Now that we have done around 30% of the floor (we are doing the laundry room too) it should not be too hard. Wait, were those famous last words? We will simply leave it at: we are cautiously optimistic that we will get ‘er done!

What have you folks been up to lately? I am not one to get all mushy, but we missed you folks last week. Any flooring projects going on? Do you like to leave the house perfectly clean before embarking on a big trip or start something and leave it half-done to greet you when you return?