Our master bedroom is a beautiful, beautiful sight. I’d say so, at least.
We spent the entire first month of Hattie’s life trying to figure out when we could finish the flooring. The decision to leave the master bedroom for last became a little more complex when all of a sudden we had a newborn sleeping in a cradle next to us, but we found ourselves well rested with a free weekend (and Grandparents happy to snuggle with our birdie) so we went at the carpet and oak flooring in a furious fashion. Buh-bye, last of the old carpet! We won’t miss you at all.
I’m not sure whether we can credit our speed in clearing the 250+ sq. ft. room to having had a bit of practice at this point, or because I was able to move a little faster not being hugely pregnant, or simply because we really had the ability to focus on the situation at hand. It only took us one day to remove the carpet and all of the underlying oak, whereas Julia’s and Hattie’s much smaller bedrooms each seemed to take way longer.
The oaks were, like in other rooms, really beautiful, and removing beautiful flooring is downright painful, but unlike in the other two bedrooms, we found a lot of old water damage that resulted in warped and rotting boards. So, even if we had hoped to refinish the original floors, there would have been plenty of work required in weaving in new oak.
Because some of you have curiously inquired about what we’re going to do with all those boards, we’ve (Pete and solely Pete) been removing all of the exposed nails from each individual piece, and plan to try and sell the whole batch via Craigslist. Selling as much as possible in one haul is ideal, but if it comes down to it, we will split it up amongst interested buyers. And worse comes to worse, we’ll donate what’s left to Habitat’s ReStore or local salvage company, ReHouse.
The stash is consuming part of our basement. The three piles in the foreground are just from our master bedroom alone… the boards more neatly stacked in the background are divided by size from the other rooms.
After removing the oak, I spent hours on my hands and knees finding floorboard nails that had popped loose when the boards were yanked from their position, just another of the tedious steps required to get the flooring ready for a new underlayment. In the other bedrooms, we spent plenty of time looking for these nails, but I found what really what works best is playing blind and running your (gloved) hand along every board until it snags a raised head. Some of the nails I pried out with the hammer, others I showed who was boss and slammed them back into their motherboard. All’s well, no more raised nails, no fingies crushed.
Removing the oak and carpets in a single day was inarguably a tremendous accomplishment (go us, I love us), but the very next day in just 7 hours time, Pete singlehandedly laid and secured all of the plywood underlayment over the subfloor, leaving us with a base ready for the flooring.
In order to resume some normalcy, we also laid all of the foam underlayment that sits directly beneath the maple so that we were able to move our bed back into place and occupy the room with the baby without feeling like we were living in a construction zone.
We still haven’t been able to begin racking boards, but maybe today we’ll find some time to get started on that step. (I’m quietly hopeful that we’ll have the bedroom done before Christmas.) Happy Friday!
Leave A Reply