It has been a crazy week for me. We have been working on our floors daily. We are about half way done today. Many people have asked me if it is hard; my reply is that it is VERY physically demanding, but not hard to learn. It does, however, involve more steps than I anticipated. I originally thought I could break it up into 3 posts, but now I am not so sure. I don't want the posts to become to long. So, I will start at the beginning (for it's a very good place to start) and we will see how far I get today.
The first step in laying laminate flooring is to prep your floors. In all my research on the subject, they act like this is a very simple task. On the "how to" lists, this is normally a one sentence note, like "oh, by the way, you should prep your floors first". Well I am here to tell you prepping the floors might actually be the hardest part in the process--at the very least it is the most time consuming and annoying.
When we ripped out our carpet we were left with carpet tracks nailed into our slab. You can see them around the edges of the room in this picture:
The internet told me to just pull these out with a crowbar. There is no "just"about this.
Step one: shove crowbar into tack strip, trying to get it between the slab and the wood.
Step two: use leverage to lift the wood away from the slab.
Step three: continue down row, pulling up the carpet tack as you go. In this picture it came up pretty nicely. However, over half the time it would crumble to pieces forcing me to start back at step one every two inches.
The above steps leave you with a row of nails sticking out of the slab, spaced about 4 inches apart.
Step four: use the crowbar to pop the nail out. This is harder than it looks. Some times I was sitting there pulling with all my body weight and the nail would eventually pop out and I would almost go flying back.
Oh, yeah, if you use the crowbar to get the nails out then:
Step five: DUCK! These nails go FLYING out. I wore a mask and eye protection and I still got a scratch on my neck from a nail flying at me like a bullet.
There is another problem with using a crowbar, sometimes the nail pulls out a crater of concrete with it. Actually, this happened the majority of the time. I tried to take a picture but it didn't turn out that great. You can kind of see the divot right in the middle.
At first I was really worried about these divots, so I looked them up online. From what I found they aren't a big deal unless you want to be able to put carpet down later or unless there are too many big ones in a row. I could care less about putting down carpet, but I was concerned because I was getting a LOT of big divots, and I could tell that wouldn't provide good support for the floor boards. So, I came up with my own method of nail removal:
Step Six: beat the nails to death. I used a normal hammer and lined it up on the side of the nail and started hitting the nails from either side, back and forth. I think these pictures communicate the process:
This resulted in the nail breaking off at the point it meets the slab or coming out completely.
Either way was fine with me because it made my slab flat.
However, I will warn you that my hammer method takes FOREVER. I went nail by nail through room by room on my hands and knees. When I was done for the day my whole right arm hurt. Concrete doesn't have much give...and so my arm absorbed a lot of the rebounding force from my hammer swing.
I did this for 6 hours on Friday before LJ got off of work and came to help (I took the day off...fun vacation day!). He was able to get nails out of the slab with only one or two swings. Made me feel like a weak little girl, but it also helped me get this step done quicker. (I think his record was three nails out on one swing.)
That's all I am going to post today. I am hen pecking this on my phone because even though we now have internet, we can't find our router...oh I just love moving!
You might get a kick out of my carpet tack killing outfit (I did). Apparently everything I own is blue, black and gray. I swear I wasn't trying to match but this is what I ended up wearing...man, I am ready for my own home improvement show!
This project is continued here.
The first step in laying laminate flooring is to prep your floors. In all my research on the subject, they act like this is a very simple task. On the "how to" lists, this is normally a one sentence note, like "oh, by the way, you should prep your floors first". Well I am here to tell you prepping the floors might actually be the hardest part in the process--at the very least it is the most time consuming and annoying.
When we ripped out our carpet we were left with carpet tracks nailed into our slab. You can see them around the edges of the room in this picture:
The internet told me to just pull these out with a crowbar. There is no "just"about this.
Step one: shove crowbar into tack strip, trying to get it between the slab and the wood.
Step two: use leverage to lift the wood away from the slab.
Step three: continue down row, pulling up the carpet tack as you go. In this picture it came up pretty nicely. However, over half the time it would crumble to pieces forcing me to start back at step one every two inches.
The above steps leave you with a row of nails sticking out of the slab, spaced about 4 inches apart.
Step four: use the crowbar to pop the nail out. This is harder than it looks. Some times I was sitting there pulling with all my body weight and the nail would eventually pop out and I would almost go flying back.
Oh, yeah, if you use the crowbar to get the nails out then:
Step five: DUCK! These nails go FLYING out. I wore a mask and eye protection and I still got a scratch on my neck from a nail flying at me like a bullet.
There is another problem with using a crowbar, sometimes the nail pulls out a crater of concrete with it. Actually, this happened the majority of the time. I tried to take a picture but it didn't turn out that great. You can kind of see the divot right in the middle.
At first I was really worried about these divots, so I looked them up online. From what I found they aren't a big deal unless you want to be able to put carpet down later or unless there are too many big ones in a row. I could care less about putting down carpet, but I was concerned because I was getting a LOT of big divots, and I could tell that wouldn't provide good support for the floor boards. So, I came up with my own method of nail removal:
Step Six: beat the nails to death. I used a normal hammer and lined it up on the side of the nail and started hitting the nails from either side, back and forth. I think these pictures communicate the process:
This resulted in the nail breaking off at the point it meets the slab or coming out completely.
Either way was fine with me because it made my slab flat.
However, I will warn you that my hammer method takes FOREVER. I went nail by nail through room by room on my hands and knees. When I was done for the day my whole right arm hurt. Concrete doesn't have much give...and so my arm absorbed a lot of the rebounding force from my hammer swing.
I did this for 6 hours on Friday before LJ got off of work and came to help (I took the day off...fun vacation day!). He was able to get nails out of the slab with only one or two swings. Made me feel like a weak little girl, but it also helped me get this step done quicker. (I think his record was three nails out on one swing.)
That's all I am going to post today. I am hen pecking this on my phone because even though we now have internet, we can't find our router...oh I just love moving!
You might get a kick out of my carpet tack killing outfit (I did). Apparently everything I own is blue, black and gray. I swear I wasn't trying to match but this is what I ended up wearing...man, I am ready for my own home improvement show!
This project is continued here.
No difficulty rating? I feel like it should get a special scaled rating. Doing one little area of carpet tack/nails would be easy, but doing a wohle house is grueling. Also, it helps to yell at the nails as you attack them. Lets them know who is in charge.
ReplyDeleteIs that what you were doing? ;) Sounded like you were just yelling random angry words to me!
DeleteHahahahaha, LJ.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like I'd rate it a 7.5, maybe 8. Do new houses even have the carpet tacked down like this? Eeesh. Good luck guys. I wouldn't mind learning this weekend, so you can put me to work! (:
Claire, carpet tacking is still the standard. Some of what we took out was tacking for carpet they just installed a few months ago. I will say that I could tell a difference in the nails they used to attach the tacking strips. The newer carpet tack had fatter nails holding it down and these fatter nails came out easier (but still not easily).
DeleteWatch what you say... I'll take you up on that! ;)