Day 81, Oak Floor Installation Milestone Day plus the Tile Floor Installations

This is a big milestone day, Dan Page is here to un-bundle that stack of oak planks sitting in the Living Room (antique) and begin to installing them in the Family Room.

ABOVE, Darrell confers with Dan about order of install in the next couple of days.

ABOVE, Darrell finalizes the order of installing the flooring. The planks are hammered in place then fastened with a special 2 inch U shaped stable.

Two essential tools are the air handling units to power the staple hammers and the high powered vacuums to keep the sawdust down from the sanding process before they stain the floors.

BELOW, Dan and Scott discuss next steps before stapling their first plank.

When they install floors; they do it in a certain direction according to the groove on each oak plank. If they need to reverse direction they can use a small insert piece tacked into the slot. 

The installer staged the planks so they can just shove them into position with their rubber tipped mallets and staple them into place.

BELOW, As the floor is being installed; the builders install the new Panasonic flat screen over the fireplace. Note them reading the installation instructions

Darrell and Stacy discuss the flat screen installation. When in doubt they resorted to reading the included installation instructions.

RIGHT, you get a good view of Scott using the mallet to hammer the the staple machine driving that 2" staple into the oak plank fasteing it to the floor.

Note there is a paper barrier between the sub floor and the planks.




BELOW, Scott vacuums the dust as Dan make a cut to fit a plank tight to the edge of the fireplace hearth.

As usual the boom box is tuned to a Country music station. What we do if we couldn't hear Pete Stringfellow sing about Sonoma with tunes like "Santa Rosa"?

ABOVE, Stacy and Darrell discuss the installation of the cook top and vertical vent system into our Kitchen counter top.

RIGHT, Todd measures another tile for installation in the Utility room. This room may be the first room really to be finished.


Once the floor and trim is complete, we can move two of the refrigerators into their new locations. The plumbing may be later after the granite install.

ABOVE, these  are the boxed tiles before they are installed








LEFT' Todd cuts the tile with a special diamond tipped blade. We picked the tile to match the pavers installed in the porch and mud room.







BELOW, the floor is now ready to have the grout installed. Sandy and I had to pick the grout color for each tile. We are getting good at making a quick color decision; 'Camel' and 'White Dove'

NEXT:
Darrell adds to his list of things to be done. During this phase the list becomes very robust.

Flooring installation is the order of the day for tomorrow.