Monday, February 11, 2008

What a difference the right tool makes!

Picked up the air-powered flooring stapler on Thursday night. What a huge difference this made!

Got the floor done in the room and it's gorgeous!

I took Friday off work. With one thing and another I got started about mid-day on Friday. Worked until the light and my back gave out on Friday, then a full day on Saturday. At that point I had all the floor down that the air stapler would do. And again, my back was done in. It isn't hard labor with the air tool but most of the time you're bent over, either whacking wood into place or whacking the stapler. Took the stapler back in time to only get charged two days rent. While I was putting down flooring, Alice stained the shoe molding and gave it a coat of polyurethane. Then it was miller time.

Sunday I got the rest of the room floor down, the last four of five strips. I had to use my finish nailers for those, the last two strips only have 1-1/4-inch nails because there wasn't even room for the bigger finish nailer. Finished the day by cutting and installing the shoe molding and the threshold to the hallway.

I got to use my new-to-me radial arm saw. Last October I was having a beer with my neighbor, Paul. Someone he worked with was selling his tools. I got a radial arm saw and a 12-inch planer, both for $175. Paul delivered them when I was out seeing the world and I haven't had a project that needed them yet. I set up the radial arm for 45-degree cuts one direction and the table saw for the opposite. Made it all go very quick, especially around the multiple corners you can see on the right in the picture.

I spent a lot of today reinstalling "the data center". Three computers now up and running.

The rest of the room is mostly empty. We got rid of the love seat and ottoman that were in here. My favorite big ol' comfy chair and ottoman will go in, but it has to be reupholstered. I've also got a half-dozen framed photos from my travels that will go up on the wall above the computers. And the rug that will go back down needs a pad so it doesn't scratch the wood.

I've still got the closet to floor. And I'm going to build in shelves to store our office clutter. But that'll be for another weekend.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Switching to Plan B

We got started on laying the wood floor in the home office this past weekend.

Saturday was "tearout day".

  • Took down all three computers (two work plus one of our own).
  • Moved out the love seat and ottoman. That went to the garage and then off to the lady who does Alice's hair.
  • Moved out as much of the other furniture as we could
  • Emptied out the closet. Something of a monumental job, it had a set of MDF shelves, a set of metal shelves and was crammed full of office detritus. Boxes of financial records, bits of computer equipment and supplies, the usual stuff.
  • Ripped up the carpet, pad, and tack strips.
  • Did "squeak removal" on the subfloor, a few extra screws where needed.

Alce helped a lot with the tear-out. She has an unnatural affection for shredding the old carpet with a utility knife.

All this moving of stuff has got the entire upstairs in a wreck. The spare bedrooms and the hallway are full of boxes and extra furniture. The master bedroom ended up being my opens space for opening up boxes of wood so I could get a good random selection as I worked.

I did a "dry layout" of the wood. Laid down small pieces side to side across the floor to help gauge how to cut the last pieces on each edge.

Sunday afternoon I got started on laying new floor. What's going in is 2-1/4-inch x 3/4-inch Bellawood Brazilian Teak. It took me a long time to get the first strip cut, positioned, and nailed down. That first strip, three pieces of wood, has to be positioned and aligned exactly straight so the rest of the floor will be straight and gap-free. I did the next three strips by hand, drilling 45-degree holes through the tongues, hand nailing and setting.

And then I found out I'd made a mistake.

I had done some searching around for and research on nailers. Found a lot of articles praising the Bostich MFN-200 manual floor nailer. This is a damn expensive hand tool and I couldn't find anywhere to rent one. So I bought it from the local Lowe's. What none of the articles said is "this isn't a tool for an old, out-of-shape do-it-yourselfer".

It drives 2-inch L-shaped cleats. If you do it just right the cleat goes in at 45-degrees right where the tongue meets the body of the strip. There are two tricks.

  1. One is getting the thing positioned just right and having it not wiggle.
  2. The other is, as you're holding the tool absolutely still, you give it a prodigious whack with the mallet. That sets the board tight against the previous one and drives the cleat. The cleat has to be driven all the way in one blow.

If the tool wiggles, it drives the cleat through the tongue and splinters it. If you don't hit it hard enough, the head of the cleat is left sticking out and has to be cut or twisted off and then hand set.

I discovered that it is right at my physical limit to smack the thing hard enough. I managed about 4 or 5 strips (cleats about every 8 inches across the 12 feet width of the room). I thought I could keep going but on the next piece my best smacks left four cleats sticking up.

Depressing. At that rate, it would take me a couple of weeks of working every day to get the whole floor down.

So I'm switching to Plan B. Did a lot more calling and googling and found that a Home Depot about 10 miles away has a pneumatic floor nailer that I can rent for $33/day. The pneumatic nailer still gets whacked with a mallet but that is to set the board, the compressed air does the driving of the cleat or staple. This should have been Plan A. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Friday, February 1, 2008

January weather and whatnot

Really not too much going on here for the last couple of weeks.

Since my last post, there's been another layoff announced in the business area. This one is especially fiendish. Think Catbert the Evil HR Director. It was announced that a layoff was coming and that it would be February 15 before people would be told they would be let go. Those being laid off will be kept on long enough to train their Israeli and Indian replacements. I've been told that I'm not affected. I guess that means I'm good for a week or two more anyway.

Also did another exciting trip to Dallas. Well, not exciting. And possibly will be back for a third trip next week.

On the weather front (pun intended)... we're used to winter being pretty variable down here on the third coast. But this week has been ridiculous. I take the dogs out for a 30-minute walk every morning that I'm here. We hit the road about 7am give or take a bit. Temperatures this week have flip-flopped between t-shirt weather and winter coat weather. Tuesday morning was about 70, Wednesday was below 40, Thursday was 70, and today it was mid-30s. For the cold weather mornings (below 40) we actually had to buy the coats for the dogs. Got them both "home coats" from HoundTogs.

Yesterday I found out that Tucker is afraid of thunder. There was a little front that blew through about mid-morning. He got agitated at the first tiny rumblings of thunder, then when it rumbled through got very whiny and darted all over the house. He stayed agitated, pacing and whining for a good half hour after the noise was totally over. Gert just looks at him like he's an idiot when he's doing this. I swear that if dogs rolled their eyes, she'd be doing that.