Installing a Bamboo Hardwood Floor

Installing a Bamboo Hardwood Floor

Our house was brand new when my wife and I moved in 10 years ago when we got married.

Since then we have taken the basement from an unfinished to 95% finished state, moved to a new master bedroom down there, painted the upstairs bedrooms, and replaced the roof after it got damaged in a Kansas hailstorm.

What we hadn't done until now was any major work in the living room/kitchen area. This part of the house was still painted "builder's tope" and still had the original builder's quality carpet in the living room and vinyl floor in the kitchen.

Well, we finally decided to fix that last year. We pulled all our baseboards in the area we were going to floor and with help from family we painted all the walls, then over my Christmas vacation, also with LOTS of help from family we installed the floor.

We started the project by calculating the square footage of the area to be floored. 

We bought flooring and placed it in the room to be floored the weekend before starting the actual project so the wood could acclimate to the room.

Before:

I took a week of vacation at Christmas and we did 90% of the actual work while I was off. 

On Tuesday my father in law came over and we tore out all the old carpet and pad in the living room, pulled up tack strips around the edges of the room, pulled the vinyl floor in the kitchen, and the luan subfloor that was under the vinyl.

My father in law is a plumber and he pulled our dishwasher for us so we could put plywood there to bring it up to the level of the new floor. He then re-installed it for us.

He also helped us pull and later re-connect our gas stove. 

Wednesday we finished tearing up the carpet in the hallway, then rented a floor sander to flatten out a few high spots. We then nailed down a ton on staples in the kitchen area that were used to fasten down the luan and didn't come up when we pulled it. We ended the day by checking spacing by test installing some boards from one wall to the other. 

Thursday my brother and dad came over and we started in on the actual flooring. We got about half way across the main room that day. 

Friday I did the finicky kitchen area.

Saturday my brother came over again and we finished the main room and did the hall.

Sunday I rested and did family stuff. 

Monday I put a bit of trim back up so we could put our kitchen table back together and get our house back in a livable state. 

The next weekend I did the tricky end of the hall and put up a bit more trim so we could move our fish tank back in to the house and set it back up.

This happened a lot more often during this project than I want to think about. Dead board and wasted time pulling it back up. 

This weekend I took some time off from the project to relax and spend with family. 

Next weekend I hope to finish the door transitions and do the landing at the top of the stairs. That will just leave two closets to do and a bunch of trim to put back up.