Kitchen Progress Plus Daddy

My very wonderful father shared not only his Labor Day weekend, but also his anniversary, with us to help us with the kitchen (and my sweet mother gave us all her blessing!). He was a huge help and we actually made fantastic time. On Saturday (after some early morning garage saling, of course -- the Germantown Marc station has a huge flea market the first Saturday of every month) we put in the floor. We'd chosen the Bruce Flooring "Marsh" color from Home Depot, because of the fantastic price. They ran a special with 10% more in the boxes, plus we used coupons. Then, we also were able to get half off 9 boxes (so far) because they were opened. So far at current pricing, we're getting the flooring for $1.68 per square foot. If we are able to find more open boxes, that could go even lower (we still have more to buy because we're doing hardwood throughout the first floor).


The floor prep was a lot of work, because the subfloor was in pretty messed up shape after the layers we'd chipped off of it. Using a belt sander to even it out helped a lot, but we also needed to build up the spots where the floor had layers splintered up, leaving low areas. We used tar paper (which had been given to us for free by a friend when moving) and Jack carefully cut layers in the right shapes to fill up the holes. 

We have a great system going when we work on this; the three of us have done it before in my parents' dining room. I pick the pieces, planning for the seams, and cut them to size. My dad and Jack are on their knees, my dad tapping each piece into a perfect fit and Jack nailing it into place. We don't have one of the angled floor nailers, but the regular nail guns seem to work just fine (they wore kneepads). We were able to get the entire floor in that day, praise God!

Sunday after church they finished the base cabinets, but they didn't have the camera with them, so pics of that will be in the next post with the appliances. :)


Cost:
flooring for  kitchen: $174.72