Our New Wood Floors!

They're finally done! Last night, Joe and I nailed in the final boards for the new wood floor in the dining room. That completed the installation process for both front rooms of our house. We both love how they turned out and I have to say I'm quite proud of us for getting it all done. Before I go into our flooring process, you may have noticed that I've failed to post anything on here for the last couple weeks so I wanted to give you a quick recap on what we've been up to.

Just a quick "before" picture of the living room. 

Two weekends ago, Joe and I spent a while removing the carpet and preparing the sub floor in the dining room for the new wood floors. Then after a 7 mile(!) run on Saturday, my Uncle Dave and cousin Matt came in town and stayed with us for a night on their way to visit a school a little farther south in Missouri. It was good to see them and visit for a while. The next day I had to fly down to Houston for a pipeline conference and class that was from Monday thru Wednesday. The conference was fun (as fun as a pipeline conference can be) but the real highlight of the trip was getting to visit and have dinner with Mimi on Monday night. Mimi made a delicious shrimp casserole for me and my friend who was also at the conference. Thanks again, Mimi, it was good to see you! I got home on Wednesday afternoon and immediately started making two Valentine's desserts, one for Joe and I and one for me to bring to work. Then this past weekend was spent working on the dining room floor and making another Birthday Blessings cake (which I'll post about soon). Aaaaaaand I guess those are all the high points :)

The living room after tearing out the carpet.

Back to the floor. Joe and I had talked about installing floors in our living room and dining room for a while and after checking out the selection at Lumber Liquidators we found some flooring we liked but decided to wait for a really good sale. I signed up for email updates from them so when a good deal popped into my inbox we jumped on it and got our floors. A few weeks after that we finally borrowed the tools we needed from our friends (thanks Steve and Mandy & Paul!) and were able to get to work. Before getting started though, we watched a few helpful videos on YouTube about installing wood floors. It was slow going at the start when we were having to do all the nailing by hand, and the angled doorway in the living room didn't help matters either.

Joe nailing in the first row!

Evidence that I helped too. 

Once we were able to start using the nail gun though, we sailed along much quicker. The end was slow again when we didn't have room to use the nail gun and had to hand nail the boards.

Half way done!

But once it was complete and cleaned up, it was well worth the effort and the knee pain. I was the one who had to crawl around on the floor and place all the boards. Joe manned the nail gun. I only have finished pictures of the living room but you'll just have to take my word that the dining room is done too. There will be pictures of it eventually.

Done!

A slightly better picture with better lighting. Oh, and we plan to eventually refinish the lighter floors to match the new ones.

Thanks for sticking around through that lengthy post! I've got several other things to share with you on here so hopefully I'll be a little quicker between posts.