Grumpa Joe's Place

In a previous post I wrote about building a house within a house. So far that project is going well, but is on hold for a couple of reasons: 1. I ran out of materials, 2. while waiting for material delivery I began another project. The second project seemed to be a shoo-in. I believed I could do it with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back. I have some experience laying tile both wall and floor, and this project is similar. Only the material is different. The generic name for it is laminate flooring. The actual material manufacturer shall remain nameless but it begins with a P and ends with an O.

I prepped myself by watching a youtube video done by a man who has been installing this type of flooring for fifteen years. It was kind of like learning how to talk from a Phd. I was without any knowledge and he was immensely over qualified. I should have sought out an amateur who made a video of his very first floor installation. No matter, I jumped into the job with relish. On the very first day, I began with the boards laying north to south. The literature in the package mentioned the ease with which the boards with a patented tongue and groove locking mechanism snap together and lock to keep from separating. I must mention that the room has an angled entry way, a door into a bathroom, and a closet also on an angle. All three on the very same wall. (entry door at 45 deg, a door into the bath, followed by a door into a closet at 45 deg). Leave it to me with my vast years of experience to approach the job as a total novice and take on the most complex situation as my starting point. I worked for seven hours before I finally gave up for the day. I had laid four lines of board. Each time I added a new board in line-four, the boards in line-two jumped out of engagement. No matter what I did the separation of boards continued.

The next day, I started again, but decided to change the direction of the boards from N-S to East-West. This would give the first line of boards more stability, and prevent the random separation. Wrong! The lines kept moving out of position. To solve the problem I nailed one end of each line down to prevent movement. This worked for a couple of lines and I felt confident that I was on my way to finishing the job. I was somewhere on line nine when I looked over my shoulder to the left and saw that line three had jumped out of engagement. WTF! Calm down, I said to myself. Take it all apart and reset everything. I did, but the problem only seemed to get worse. By this time my frustration level has peaked and it was time for some wine.

Before beginning again I discussed the problem with a friend who has installed many of these floors. He gave me several pointers about why the boards are separating. The next day I began by disassembling the entire job into neat piles of boards in the line they were in so I could reassemble them in the same order. That is when I noticed a spot in the sub-floor that was uneven, and it was in the spot where all the separation was happening. In good conscience I could not overlook this dip in the floor. A visit to Home Depot cured the dipping problem with the purchase of something called quick-set. Spreading this very pliable mortar on the floor and troweling it smooth filled the dip, but it took several hours to cure. It was the week end so I took a rest.

On Sunday I had to change the five gallon water bottle on our dispenser. I have done this many times, but this time I did something a teensy bit different, and felt an instantaneous ice pick enter my back. That sharp pain is the end of my story. It has been thirty hours since my back pain began and it will take a week or more to nurse it back to a point where I can move without fear of inducing a new shot of pain. In the meantime my new floor sits in piles awaiting my amateur methodology to return.

While all this amateurism was happening, Lovely has been goading me to let an expert do the job. I tried doing that today with an online search of services. The program stopped working at the end when it is supposed to give an answer.

This DIY project reminds me of a time fifty years ago when I got the idea to refinish our kitchen cabinets with a new color. To do the job right I removed the doors and took them to my shop. There they stayed being worked on and off for three years while I struggled with varnish remover to strip a factory applied finish. All that time, my poor wife Barb lived with her kitchen cabinets exposed to the world. In the meantime, I experimented with removers and various chemicals to find bare wood, I don’t remember what the combination was but I finally struck gold and stained the doors. I could write a book about that project.

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