June 30-Day Challenge: Part I: Replace Water Damaged Floor

Fresh off of finishing the first 30-Day Challenge in May installing the new deck, this happens:

It's never a good thing to wake up, walk downstairs and when you reach the bottom step hear "Squuiiiiish" beneath your feet. 6am on Monday morning. It instantly changed our plans for our June 30-Day Challenge. And June was already going to be a tough challenge because we have a lot of things going on this month and won't be available to work on the house for at least three weekends. 

So we began ripping up the floor, calling the insurance company, researching a new hot water heater, making materials lists and developing a plan. After a small breakdown on Birdy's part, and some much needed cajoling to look on the brightside from Myko, turns out this isn't going to be SO bad.

There is damage to the living room floor, the dining room floor and the floor in the pantry.

We purchased and installed the water heater the same day the burst happened since we couldn't go too long without water. The new water heater is awesome, by the way. It's amazing that we can take multiple showers in one time period now, or that we don't have to choose between shaving our legs and washing our hair! We couldn't start on the flooring for another week or so because we had already made plans to take a short vacation to San Jose. So, we set up the blowers and let everything dry out.

The next weekend was set for the floor. We kind of thought that it would take both Saturday and Sunday to install the floor. First we had to get the few other things that we had left in that room out so that we had a clear workspace. Myko got the freezer out to the garage without too much problem. We started laying the floor in the dining room.

First we had to install the underlay foam padding.

This went down pretty easy. We used packing tape to secure all of the seams based on some advice from a number of different websites. The we started installing the actual flooring.

Even only 2 rows in it was exciting to see. The flooring really fits the personality of this house, a house that is farm style on some acreage in the woods near the river.

After we completed the dining room we needed to move the piano so that we could complete the floor. This task was NOT easy and ended up taking more time than we had hoped.

Luckily we hadn't thrown away the old pergo yet. It made this job possible. We used it as runners so as not to damage the new floor. Now the piano sits on the back porch outside the dining room awaiting pick up from its rightful owner.

Before we finished covering the subfloor with the foam we wrote a little note in case we, or the next owner's of this house, ever pull up the floor again. Just a little way to add our own embellishment and everlasting touch to this house.

Time to complete the underlayment. While Myko completed the special cuts around the door frame between the two rooms, Birdy finished taping and securing the foam. (Birdy swears she's going to do hair and make-up next time.)

It looked as though we just might finish this whole floor in one day! We work pretty well as a team. It is helpful to have the pieces ready to go and already laid out in the right direction. We got very good, very fast at the process of picking pieces, deciding on lengths, cutting and installing.

 All that was left was some special fitting around the pop out in the front of the room and the space in front of the stairs.

The last couple of pieces to be installed......

And the floor is in! It looks absolutely gorgeous and really does go well with the house. It was really easy to install and looks like it will stand up to a pretty good beating.

There is still a whole lot of work to be done (and not a lot of time to do it in). Fortunately, although it was a full day of draining work, we were able to get the entire installation done on Saturday leaving us Sunday to start on another part of the process.

Off to IKEA in the morning!