Living Room Face Lift

Say hello to the upstairs living room, located in our tenant's apartment. When we tore up the old carpet, we were hoping for one of those HGTV moments where there is beautiful hardwood floors underneath. No such luck. At least the sub floor was flat and in tact. We decided to take on this flooring project ourselves...

First we removed the rug, padding, and staples to have a flat and clean surface for the new flooring. Our new vise grip was a huge help getting the staples out. We also ripped out the baseboard. 

After the floor was cleared of debris and staples, we laid the red underlayment. It acts as a moisture barrier, sound reducer, and cushion. For the floor, we chose a click lock engineered hardwood in hand scraped maple from the Home Depot. Laying the underlayment and floor was quite easy and only took a weekend! You don't have to nail it in, it just clicks into place. Those little black things against the wall are spacers. You need to leave some room between the wall and flooring so the wood can expand and contract in different temperatures. My husband and I had a good system going. He cut the wood, I laid and measured the planks. 

The stove is disconnected, saw dust is very flammable!

The most challenging part of this project was the baseboard. (Unfortunately I don't have any good pics of it). We got a great bargain from Built it Green, our local salvage place; $10 for 50 feet of primed baseboard!!! What made the installation challenging was that the floor was slightly bowed in the middle. Because of the bowing there was a gap left under some of the baseboard, so we had to fill the gap with caulk. We also had to carefully measure and miter every angle which is why the radial saw was necessary.

before & after!

Furnished!

This project could not have been done without the right tools. Thankfully our friend lent us his radial saw. We also bought a floor spacing kit so that the floor had enough room to expand. Here is a list of what we used:

Tools:

• Saw: circular saw is fine if you are only doing the flooring. For the baseboard you will need a miter saw.
• Vise grip or hammer: to remove staples
• Crowbar: to remove baseboard

Materials:

• Engineered click lock flooring
• Underlayment
• Floor spacing installation kit