Late last week we finally began installing our hardwood floors at the new house. We’re doing the work ourselves, and while the progress has been steady, the project is proving to be time-consuming—not ideal when you’re on a tight schedule. We’re scheduled to move in this weekend and hope to finish four bedrooms and a long hallway before then. Once we have more breathing room and are further along, we’ll post a detailed play-by-play of the installation process. For now, here’s a still-dusty photo of the first room we completed: our master bedroom (we still need to install the baseboards and quarter round).
Even before the boards were down, the first real challenge was simply getting the wood home. Lumber Liquidators called to say our order was ready for pickup. Clara was napping, so Sherry stayed home with her while I ran to rent the $19 truck Lowe’s or Home Depot recommended to pick up the shipment. The order was too large to fit in our car, and renting a truck from the big-box store was less expensive than the store’s delivery service, so it made sense.
At Lowe’s I bought the quarter-round molding for the four bedrooms and hallway we planned to finish first—Lowe’s requires a purchase to rent a truck, and I needed the trim anyway. Then I drove to Lumber Liquidators to pick up the pallet.
When I saw the forklift rolling out a towering stack of boxes I was surprised at how much material we had ordered. It all looked massive. I was grateful I’d rented the truck—but that relief was short-lived. As the driver lowered the load into the truck bed I noticed one tire sagging more than the others under the weight. It wasn’t flat, just noticeably lower. Suddenly I felt that classic Nervous-Nelly panic.
The Lumber Liquidators crew adjusted the placement so the weight didn’t press so heavily on the one tire, and we agreed it was safe enough to drive slowly the few miles to the house. What followed was one of the longest three-mile drives I’ve ever taken. The load was a bit unbalanced and the boxes were stacked high and not tightly strapped, so every turn made the stack lean. I crawled through corners at about five miles per hour in the right lane with my hazards on, keeping my eyes glued to the load.
After a few turns I learned how to let the weight settle and nudged the load back toward the center, which eased my fear of an overturned truck and scattered flooring across the highway. I thought the worst was behind me—then the rain started.
It wasn’t a light sprinkle. A sudden downpour drenched the road and the cardboard boxes in my truck bed. My blood pressure spiked. Fortunately, a previous renter had left a large plastic drop cloth in the truck bed, so I pulled off to a side street and covered the entire load before it got soaked. That took a few nerve-wracking turns to get off and back onto the main road, but it mostly solved the immediate threat of water damage.
Within a block the rain stopped, but wind started to pick up. The drop cloth began to flap and come loose, so I pulled over again, removed it completely, and secured the load the best I could. I had only made it a mile from Lumber Liquidators at that point.
The remaining two miles were thankfully uneventful. I reached the new house a few hairs grayer but with the flooring intact and the truck upright. Then reality sank in: I still had to unload everything. I had not planned for unloading alone—Sherry and Clara were back at home where it hadn’t even rained—and there was no forklift at my disposal.
I began carrying boxes one at a time from the truck, up a few steps and through a narrow garage doorway into the dining room, where we wanted the wood to acclimate before installation. Each box was heavy—56 pounds—and awkwardly long at about five feet. I later did the math and realized I had hauled roughly 2,800 pounds of wood. It took about an hour to move all 50 boxes inside.
That was Clara the day after the flooring arrived, enjoying the temporary dining-room stack. Now we’re working to get the planks out of the boxes and onto the subfloor. It’s been a long, messy, and sometimes stressful start, but the progress so far is promising. We’re excited to finish these rooms and share the installation process once we have more of it complete.
