Hardwood Flooring

I'm not sure how many people actually read this blog, if you even want to call it that, but the reason I haven't been around in a few weeks was that I spent the better portion of them installing a hardwood floor in my house.  To the left is the final product.  It's 3/4 inch tongue and groove oak flooring.  

I did approximately 650 square feet of flooring covering 4 rooms.  It's the entire mainfloor of our house, save for a small bathroom and a kitchen.  I had ripped up the carpet, the pads, any little nails that I could find (even by kneeling on them) and then just did one room at a time.  A friend came over to help me square up the room, show me how the floor nail gun worked and got me started on the first few rows of wood floor.  From then on, I pretty much was on my own.  Oh, I'd call a few times and pick his brain (which as I think about it, was valuble beyond words) about something, my brother came over and offered a suggestion or two, but other than that I did the whole thing on my own.

Here are some before, during, and after photos:

Photos from the same room with simlar angle

I had much trepidation going into this ordeal.  Would our house be torn up for months?  Wood (heh!  wood floor.  wood.  heh) I not have the room squared and the end planks be crooked little sliver pieces on one end?  Would I end up overwhelmed and have to have my friend over to "hold my hand", do all the work, and wonder what the heck I did wrong?  Does this old floor have to many dips, waves, and imperfections so that the pieces would not meet from one room to the other?  Next summer is all this wood gonna all buckle on me?  Well, that remains to be seen but the more I thought about it, if wood floors were buckling left and right in people's homes, then I don't think they'd be so popular as flooring.

In the end it came out great!  We are very pleased with how the floor came out.  I just got going, got started, a little tunnel vision focus didn't hurt with the project, listened to a lot of "shuffle" on my iPod since I didn't have time to be flippin records over or even exchanging CD in and out of the player,  Of course I also had the "get what you pay for knee pads", which were frequently slipping down to my ankles.

Here is another link with some more photos:  http://family.webshots.com/album/570505611QoSxas