Day 2 of the Laminate Flooring Install

Day 2 of the Laminate Flooring Install

Well, as we expected, we didn’t actually get to install any of the laminate last night but we did get the final prep work done. Before I go into that, a couple of things. One thing we noticed was that the plywood that is nailed down over the subfloor is painted green around the borders of both of the rooms (pre-wall removal)…why?



Then there’s the crawlspace exploration and realizing the horrible state of the vapor barrier…had to put some pics of that as well!





Here are a couple of pics of the wonderful wiring that was done for the outlet in the floor and the splicing expertise under the house:





(note from the editor: The preceding picture was posted upside down. Please stand on your head to view properly.)

It took almost an hour to disconnect the wood stove and get it out onto the front porch. We actually wound up going to the manufacturer’s website to see the installation instructions because we just couldn’t figure out how to take one stupid pipe out. We did finally get it disconnected and now we have a nice hole in the wall that will be covered once we rip out the walls and drywall over everything. Next year, we’ll deal with removing the outside chimney pipe and replacing the siding. For this winter we’re just going to seal it up on the outside.



We got the wood stove (all 300lbs of it) out onto the porch with help from the neighbor, his hand truck and tow chain. Not fun, let me tell you. Then Mike and I got the hearth pad out on our own. Granted, it’s sitting in the living room still and we have no idea where to put it. We’re going to put the wood stove, gas stove, chimney pipe and hearth pad for sale either up on eBay for pickup only or locally. It should all mint a pretty penny I would expect which would go right back into the house, of course. The fun part is once we pulled up the hearth pad, we got to see what the carpet did look like before it got all worn out and it wasn’t too bad. However, we did get to see the fantastical 1970’s green carpet that was on the floor before as well, it was in the cutout where the old hearth pad was. Apparently, placing hearth pads over carpet is common place as both previous owners did it.



We also got the floor completely cleaned with Murphy’s oil soap and we can see exactly where the fireplace used to be. There’s the medallion/cover on the ceiling and a soot/creosote stained piece of plywood directly under it. So that gives us an idea of the dimensions at least. I also figured everyone needed to see a picture of my beautiful patch job:



Final thing we did last night was put down the floor leveling skim coat to prep the seams between some of the glorious particle board so that it is all ready for today to start laying the laminate. We also managed to go grocery shopping yesterday, wash and dry all the laundry (putting it away will be for another day), clean the kitchen and start to organize the breakfast nook/inside tool room.

Today, we really really get to start putting down the laminate! We need to get as much done as possible because according to all the weather stations, tomorrow hits 93 degrees, Friday is set to hit 101 and Saturday 97. We’ll need to have the floor done so this way we can bring the air mattress back out to sleep in the living room where the AC is again just to make it through those 3 days. So, we’re going to be seriously pushing today to get a veritable ton of it done.

posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, July 19, 2006