Flooring #2

Well, my cold is more or less over!  With a little help from my father-in-law Pat I've got 75% of the floor laid upstairs.

You can see how the particle-board cleat keeps all the boards nice and straight while they're nailed in place.  You can also see the nice hand-scraped finish in this photo.  This finish will help hide the scratches/dents it's likely to get with 2 boys and a dog in the house.  You just use a furntiure marker or crayon with a little paste wax to cover and nobody can tell.

The pink stuff is rosin paper which helps keep the floor quiet in the event the boards move independantly from the subfloor.

This is how far we got tonight.

Somebody complained that I wasn't adding enough detail to my blog so here goes.  The edge of the wood floor shown here is where I removed the particle board cleat.  Those little "sticks" are called battens that Pat and I cut to fill the groove and reverse the tongue-and-groove pattern to lay boards the other direction.

This is a crummy photo, but just in case someone wasn't sure what a groove is - it's that channel cut in the end of the board.

This one is just for my Mom - love you Mom!  Please note the hearing protection dangling around my neck, and the safety goggles perched on top of my head.  That black thing on the wall is our articulating TV wall mount - cool!  Next up is finish trim!