Surprise!

I walked into the house last night only to find out that Joey had installed our entire kitchen floor during the day! And I had been asking him earlier that day "when are you going to get those kitchen floors in?" And even at dinner, I asked "did you rent that nailer to do the kitchen floors?" And he just grinned and said "yes" (very vaguely). And I pretended not to be annoyed all while thinking "I wish he would just get 'er done!"

Well, the joke's on me! Cause they are done. And they look great! But let's back up a little bit to see what we (Joey) had to go through to get them to the finished product.

When we bought the house, the kitchen floor had a nice 80's/90's linoleum laid down. We thought there was the possibility of hardwood floors underneath since that's what the rest of the floors in the house consist of, but knowing they would probably be in bad shape anyway, we had already bought new hardwood flooring for our new kitchen.

Well, as Joey began to peel back the linoleum, he found another layer of linoleum underneath that and another layer of linoleum underneath that, and definitely no hardwood floors (good thing we had already bought the new stuff). It looked like a new layer of linoleum was laid down every 15-20 years.


So, Joey had to rip up all 3 layers of linoleum plus some plywood in between the layers to get down to the subfloor underneath.


Once the subfloor was exposed, we decided we didn't like quite so many "squeaks" in the floor. A few little squeaks are ok (it's called "character"), but a lot of loud squeaks are just plain annoying. So, using a chalk line, Joey outlined where the floor joists were below and then took his nail gun and bolted those subfloor planks to the joists. And "presto chango" - no more squeaks!


Final step - Joey laid down tar paper over the whole floor, and then cut and nailed down our new distressed hickory hardwood floors. I can't begin to describe how excited I was to see the end result when I walked into the house!


Here's an up close view. The planks are 5 inches wide. You can see some of the grain, knots, and "distressing" in the wood. It complements the refinished floors in the living and dining rooms very well. It's just a slightly darker shade than those floors.


What's next in the kitchen? Well, cabinets should arrive sometime between Friday and Wednesday. So, maybe I'll have 1/2 a kitchen by move-in time!