More Fun with Floors!

My 2.6 regular readers will recall that back around the last weekend of October I put wood flooring in the Family/TV room. That turned out so well, that I decided to move on to a much more technically difficult, but smaller area, the main hallway of our first floor.

The TV room took 15 boxes (17.59 square feet per box), the hallway only took six, but it took as long time wise. I had to cut and put in 4 different length transition pieces for access points to the hallway, compared to one 78" piece for the family room. The Jig saw got a lot of use in cutting pieces for the many different grooves and curves in the hallway. I must say, I'm getting quite good at this! Mrs C was most pleased, and impressed.

Of Course, the dogs were not happy. I had to use various instruments to block them from the area as I worked, and every trip back and forth to the garage after measuring to cut a piece was accompanied by my every faithful helper, Lucy. Wherever I go, Lucy must follow. Sally will watch, but Ethel will take a nap, being deaf, my hammering and sawing doesn't faze her.

Lucy though, always finds a way to get around whatever obstacle there might be, and waddle over to get in my way. Sometimes she brings a mouth full of food, and spits it out right where I'm working, as if to offer me a share.

I think it hurts her feelings that I'm not interested, but as long as I rub her belly and give her an occasional scratch behind the ears, she seems placated.

Heeeeere's Lucy! Sunning herself on a warm Summer day!

So that's what I did this weekend. I understand that the people who install carpet have to use a lot of tacks, but damn, getting them out is tedious and time consuming. The Hallway is a high traffic area in any house, and when you have dogs, keeping the carpet clean is an exponentially trying task, especially on carpet. I steam cleaned the hallway regularly, as often as every weekend, because of all the hair, and assorted dirt the dogs drag in on their happy little paws.

I put about 16 hours of labor into the hallway, and that's not counting the trip to Lowes to buy all the supplies ($309.44). Thankfully, Flooring was 15% off this weekend, so I saved a few bucks. I had to buy 5 boxes of flooring, (I had one left over from the Family Room), and two 78" transition pieces that I cut as needed. When I do work for other people, I charge $25 an hour.

So I look at the expense of this as around $700. When we looked into having an local floor company come in and do our family room, they came back with an estimate in excess of $3500, which I thought was kind of steep. The wood and supplies for the Family room ran me around $850, and I did that in 18 hours,, at a self labor cost of $450. So I look at that as an expenditure of $1300. So I think I can reasonably say I saved myself a few bucks by doing all my own work.

Hey, I already owned all the required tools, why not?

So What's next? The reasonably easy dining room, which is 22'6" by 11' 8 ". It is a perfect square, and won't require the jigsaw at all, only straight cuts. Now I round up for my supplies, and I'm figuring I'm going to need 16 boxes of flooring to do the Dining room, and I have enough of a transition piece left over to do the entryway from the kitchen to the dining room. I also have half a box left over from the hallway, so I've got spares.

I'm figuring 16 boxes at $52.20 a box equals $835.20 + tax = $ 885.31 throw in 16 hours of labor ($400.00) and I'm thinking I might get the entire first floor finished by March. I've got a couple of odd jobs lined up in the meantime, (like putting a second coat of paint on our 20 foot ceiling in the foyer) but I'm feeling pretty accomplished right now. Yeah, I like writing, but sometimes I get the best inspiration on what to write about while working with my hands, and that's what happened here, as you will eventually find out.