A Method to the Madness

The weekend following my reunion, my folks very generously came back to help us finish our flooring project. I thought I'd show a bit of our installation procedure. :)

The boards are laminate, so there are only a limited number of "designs" or patterns. Ten, to be exact.  The instructions tell you to randomly choose boards from at least three different packages to avoid the look of a pattern. However, I am really sensitive to patterns (i.e. I am anal) and insisted on hand-selecting each board that was placed in our 900 square foot area. I just knew it would drive me crazy to see two of the same pattern boards "randomly" placed next to each other. Or too close to each other. Or in the same row. Did I mention I'm sensitive?

This photo shows how I would make stacks of the ten patterns against the wall. I found that to be the easiest way to make my selections. I even came up with nicknames for the patterns, such as "the bird", "spot", "swooshes" and "the hill."

I would lay the boards out in the order I liked and then Doug would come and snap them into place. I did some installing as well, but I could only go so far before a cut needed to be made. My dad and husband banned me from using the chop-saw thingy. :-(

When we were coming down to the end of the project, Doug pointed out that we may not have enough boards left. In a panic, I counted the remaining boards while Doug estimated how many rows and boards per row we needed to finish. He told me 86 boards. We had exactly 86 boards. True story!

Thankfully we had enough and finished with only 5 full boards left over. We did estimate about 10% waste but I guess we wasted more than average. An unnamed person suggested it may have had something to do with the "selection" phase of the installation being too picky, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. We just ran a highly efficient project worthy of a Six Sigma belt of some kind (engineer joke).

Our floor is beautiful and I am SOOOOOO happy with it! We worked so hard and were able to save $1790 by installing it ourselves. Who knows how much the demo would have cost, not to mention the savings from ordering the flooring online and getting free shipping! I'd say we easily saved $4000 total.

Again, I'd like to point out that my mom and dad were invaluable to our successful project. Dad worked tirelessly and provided sound advice and expertise. Mom was babysitter extraordinaire - taking the girls to the museum, the park, pottery painting, reading hours of stories and playing hours and hours of games and puzzles. She has the patience of a saint!


Will post some "after pictures" someday. Hopefully this year. Am waiting for our new camera as our current one does not have flash and really doesn't do it justice.