We've only just begun

I've been a little bit behind on posting, but I'll bring you up to date quickly. I have no choice because the pace is beginning to really speed up.

I started the flooring project the weekend of the 24th. It was a nice weekend to do it, given that there was no football to distract me. Here's the before picture. Notice the carpet, hardwood floors, and the baseboards. Also notice the direction the floors are facing. They're wrong because they should go perpendicular to the floor joists, but they're parallel. I decided to start in the foyer area because when I start laying the floors, I want to avoid having to switch the direction of the flooring's tongue and groove system. By starting along the wall in the upper right corner of the picture, I should only have to turn around 2 -4 times for the whole first floor. If I started in our family room, I'd have to turn around about 6 times. Not fun.

After the first weekend, here's where the project stands. Ripping up the carpet was pretty easy, and I've done that before. I think I had that done in about an hour. Ripping out the baseboards was a bit more difficult because I was trying to save them. After chipping a few, I realized that Jen is going to want new baseboards someday (soon) and there's no point in trying to take them off gently. That part of the project went a lot faster after that. Then, I had the part I was dreading... ripping up the hardwood. I've also done this before, but I knew there wasn't an easy way to do it. Luckily, I've already learned some things about the process.

The main problem is the staples that are left behind. Check out the picture here to get an indicator of what they look like after the floor is pulled up. You might not be able to see how many there are there, but trust me, there are a LOT. I'd guess that for each sheet of OSB in the subfloor, there are roughly 200 staples.

I've been working on trying to pull up the flooring with as many staples in tact, but it's not perfect at all. Ideally, the underside of the flooring will end up looking like a used Biore strip, with the bulk of the "blackheads" sticking to what you've just pulled up. If you do more lifting than prying, it seems to help, but it also seems to depend on where the flooring was. Higher-traffic areas seem to come up a lot easier. So, I'm not looking forward to the office, but the bathroom should be a breeze (rim shot sound effect). Try as I may though, there's still a ton to pull.

It's easily the most grueling part of the process, taking it out on your hands, back, and mind. I found that it's best to tackle it one sheet of OSB at a time. If you go in a random pattern, you're going to find that you miss a lot, and if you do you're going to have squeaky floors when you put them over a staple.

I also bought a new tool for the job. A guy at Home Depot recommended it, and I'm glad he did. This tool is basically a specialized set of pliers that are meant to cut nails. The rounded head works out well because you just grab the staple and pry back. I'm able to pull about 1 every two seconds. The old way, using the pry bar, took roughly five seconds per staple.

Also, check out the size of these suckers. Each is about 1 1/2" long. Some of them break and basically become nails sticking out of the floor, so I try to keep Jen out of the rooms on which I'm working.

The next worst part of the job is carrying the pulled up boards to the garage. After the first weekend, I had one whole wall of the garage covered. I did figure out something during my second weekend of work. The wood stacks up better if you stand on the recently pulled sheet (STAPLES DOWN) and wiggle around a bit. This flattens out the remaining staples, and means I can stack two sheets for every one I could without doing so.

I finished up the kitchen this past weekend, and had to rent what's called a Tow Kick Saw. It really worked well, allowing me to cut flush to the cabinets (we're leaving them in place) and avoid much chiseling. It is kindof a beast though, and you really have to muscle it because it has a tendency to kick hard to the right. Also, make sure the blade stops spinning before you set it down. It has a safety latch, but if you set it down on the right (read: wrong) angle, it'll also swing around to the right looking for toes to mangle. I learned that the hard way, but my cat-like reflexes saved me from a trip to the emergency room. That reminds me, I still need to get a tetanus shot.