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.