New floor

In early September we worked really hard to get the kitchen, dining room, entry way and first floor hallway painted before the new hardwood floors were installed.  Jim Dewitz and his incredible team spent 2 days turning our ugly OSB (oriented strand board) and plywood floors into an incredibly nice hardwood floor.  

It was a great time watching them work together to bang out the floor.  In just a few quick hours the dining room and kitchen were almost done.  It was quite a feat to watch.  Sure Mark and I could have installed the wood.  It's easy, right.  Toss the wood down, nail it in and repeat.  But the key to almost any home project is having the right tools.  Oh, and years of experience doesn't hurt.  

Getting started was the hardest part

Working as a team - Jim, Nate and Mike

Jim and Mike laid the wood out while the Nate nailed them in 

I can only imagine how long it would have taken Mark and I to do this.  And would it have looked as nice????  Hard to say!

The floor is a mix of 3" and 4.25" #2 Red Oak boards.  The boards have quite a bit of variation in color with streaks of grey throughout.  We opted against the hand-scraped wood that goes through a process to make it rough but the assortment we received has a great deal of natural markings from knots, worm holes and other things that happened to the tree in the forest.  Can't wait to see how it looks after it is finished.

Lots of character - knots, worm holes, variations in wood color 

By the end of the first day, the kitchen and dining room were finished.  The guys just got started in the hallway then called it a day.  They came back the next day to do the hallway and thought they'd be done by lunchtime.  Oh if only it was so.  With two closets and the stairs they ended up working most of the day to finish the installation.  Working around the metal of the stair railings and into the closets takes so much longer than the straight forward rectangle of the kitchen and dining room. 

Here's how it looks now.

Dining room looking from the kitchen

Kitchen (with our new fridge!!!) 

Front Entryway

It's great to have the floors installed so that we aren't walking on staples, nail heads and rough wood just ripe for giving bare feet slivers.  We can actually was barefoot or in our stocking feet now even though the floor has not been finished. 

Next week (week of Oct 20th) the installation of the kitchen cabinets will get started.  Once the cabinets are in, Jim and his crew will come back to stain and polyurethane the floors.  

Up next..... fireplace installation.