Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Close to crunch time

Move day is Saturday. I've got 500/1800 sq ft of hardwood installed and no time left to install it all. We've prioritized the list and decided that the family room must be completed so that we can put all the couches and bookshelves in there on Saturday.

So of course that's the hardest room to get ready for hardwood.

Actually, the room itself is not to bad as it has almost all square corners and no closet to install hardwood in. Problem is that it has (had) carpet with a tile surround.

The carpet ripped up easily, and Rosemary pulled out the staples fairly quickly. We took 3 hours to bash and then clean out the tile with a 5lb sledge and a hammer.

This left the original plywood subfloor covered with the grout and thinset used to put the tile on. The monkey that installed in used at least three kinds of thinset and they bonded with varying degrees of success to the plywood.

I flipped a quarter and decided to try and remove the thinset rather than rip out and replace the plywood. I asked a couple of flooring guys and ended up renting a Hilti TE 905-AVR Breaker Hammer. This is one bad ass tool. I got it with a 5" and 3" bit. It took me about 3 hours to clean off all the plywood to get it to a flush enough surface for the hardwood install. Well worth the rental. I think it was $50 for 4 hours. The rental place also sold the tool - $2000.

The right tool for the job.
The family room is only 400 ft so even allowing time for screwing down the subfloor, laying the felt, priming one section to cover up a dog piss smell, we should be able to get this done tonight and tomorrow. Then I get back to work on Joshua's bedroom.


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