And so, it begins

Flooring install, Day 1:

After nearly two hours at Menards on Saturday, hunting, fiddling, playing with tools, and generally looking like I knew exactly what I was there to get, this was all I needed to get started. Knee pads, slap hammer, staples for slap hammer, 2" finish nails, some brads for a borrowed nail gun and a nail set pack. I pretty much already have or have borrowed the other tools I need. But I did buy the wrong staples for the slap hammer, so I made one trip back to Menards to get the right ones. All in all, that's not too bad. You always expect one extra trip back to the store for something. Thank God this isn't plumbing, or I would have put 200 miles on my truck going back and forth. That, and I absolutely loathe all things plumbing and pipe-related (lookin' at you gas lines). Does that make me a homophobe? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I went to Lowe's to buy my underlayment - 30# roofing felt. I would have gotten it at Menards, but they keep all their felt outside and the last thing I wanted was to unroll my underlayment and discover it was soaking wet from sitting out in the rain. Not a good thing for underneath a wood floor. I'm starting in the corner of the window well area there, and right off the bat, I will be cutting a hole for the register as well as the angled end cuts around the stairs (see below). My hope is, by the time I get past this section, the rest of the room(s) will seem easy.

Here's the opposite end of that wall where it dies into a 60-degree angle where the stairs jut into the main level. How, you may ask yourself, did I know it was a 60-degree angle? Why, with that little, blue, $1 grade school protractor I dug out of Isaac's bookbag. I measured the angle on the underlayment and made a perfect cut on my first try. It can only go downhill from here. Today, after I snap my chalk lines to mark the floor joists, I will face-nail the first row of boards in the window well area, then I'll dummy (read: set, but not nail down) as much of the floor as I can and make as many of my cuts as possible. On Monday, I'm renting a pneumatic hardwood flooring nailer and, hopefully by the time I get it home, I can start slamming boards down right away.

Tomorrow: The best laid (floor) plans of mice and men...