New Floors - Day 9

I suppose life is a mixed bag.  Today was a mixed bag.

On the one hand, nothing bad happened today.  In fact, everything that happened today was good, even if it was a reminder and a resolution of bad things or a revelation of bad things.  (I will explain.)

But first things first.

SPF had to work in Riverside, so I got up early, got the kids up early, and was back at the house by 8:00.  I finished the last little bit of prep just as I heard a light knock at the door.  The carpet guys were prompt, professional, nice, and remarkably efficient.  They were on time, and done by 12:48.

They were so efficient, in fact, that I didn't get any images of the demo except for this discarded piece of old carpet that was sitting outside the master bedroom while they diligently worked inside.  Super awesome.  And it had this sort of "reveal" charm to it when I next saw the bedroom.

This is the new, installed carpet next to that remnant once the doors opened up.  Eeeeeee!  So pretty, and clean, and thick!  SPF and I both thought that the bedroom carpets were in okay shape until we felt the new carpet.  Night and day.

And here it is by the sliding glass door.  It's closer to color in the first shot (shame on me) but I like the cleanness of it.  So amazing.  No issues in the master bedroom.

The kids bedroom, however, had some issues.

 At first, there were no issues, just ripped out the carpet no problem.

And then there was this.  The cracked foundation in the closet of the boys room.  This isn't exactly unexpected as the whole complex shifted down the hill during the landslide, and the building itself has been shored up and solidified with an I-beam, but this was disconcerting none the less.  It's about a foot deep.  This is in a closet so it doesn't bear walking weight, and I'm not worried about the house itself falling down, but this is a potential ingress for water, moisture, bugs, etc.  No fun.  Along with this, though I don't have an image, we found that the wood portion of the floor had separated from the concrete all along the length of the room.  Again, not a safety issue, but a problem anyway.

The good news is that Travis and Mike had come back to look at our flooring fiasco and were on hand to guide us into buying a 2-part concrete epoxy to fill and seal the gaps.  It won't hold the house together, which we don't need (I promise you, the house is solid, there are just remnants left from before it was solid) but it will also keep out the moisture and bugs.  We bought 5 tubes of the stuff.  Travis, the angel that he is, installed it for us.

Once it was completed (about half an hour after discovery) the flooring in the boys room continued.  This is the carpet pad.  Yay!  (I'll get finished pictures to you later.)

And now back to the wood.  After looking at it and trying to hash out why the original installer had shimmed the nosing into place when the apron and the sub floor had both been perfectly level, the guys decided that the only way to fix it was to start fresh.  The took out the baseboard (which was toast anyway) and the nosing along the half wall and the entryway, all the way back to the top of the stairs.

Out of curiousity, Travis checked the level of the floor after he did this.  The level demonstrated that the reasoning we had been told for the shimming was false.  We had been told that the floor "plummeted" towards the front door.  Turns out, it's level.  Not just level enough for government work, but way more level than a floor built in 1975 that has undergone a landslide and been propped up an I-beam has any right to be.  LEVEL level.  So why he shimmed it?  Nobody knows.  I bet poor Travis is still trying to figure this out.

And yet another conundrum.  When the installer put the nosing against the top of the stairs, he didn't make sure the nosing was flush.  At all.  So when the nosing is pushed up against the apron that Travis and Mike put in, which is flush and level, it doesn't match up with the cut the installer made.  This is a big problem.  At this point, we've already lost the nosing along the half wall and the hall edge.  If we had to pull this up as well, we'd be in a situation where we would start a domino effect of ripping out the floor.  The new floor.  Way more of it than we want to be messing with.  So Travis and Mike thought about this and thought about this and Mike said the only thing he could think to do was make a custom stair nosing that would be a bit thicker, fit this awkward hole, and fill the entire length of where the nosing needed to go without the horrible tiny strip of wood I mentioned before.  SOLD!

So here's what I learned today.
1. When you are laying a hardwood floor with a staircase in the middle of it, you lay the stair nosing along the longest edge of the staircase first (after checking for a level floor, duh) and then align your full planks in that direction.  THAT becomes your starting point that is the straight line you use to lay the rest of the floor.  This does two things.  First, it makes sure you have a full plank next to your stair nosing, and second, it makes all of your cuts along the walls, which can be hidden by baseboard.
2.  Good quality craftsmen are not a dime a dozen.
3.  When in doubt, make a new piece of stair nosing that can bridge the gap of the poorly installed wood and get rid of the sliver of wood that accentuates the loss of 1" of straight line over an 8' span so that, perceptually, it appears as though the floor was installed correctly even though this is a repair job.
4.  Travis and Mike are superheroes.  With mild-mannered alter egos.  Seriously.  Nicest guys.

And just to pour lemon juice on the wound, if the other installed had just not shimmed the nosing, everything would have fit together perfectly.  That is a board simply lying across the top of the apron (that Travis and Mike installed correctly) and fitting with no additional effort onto the tongue of the remaining wood.

Yep.  This guy created his own problems, and now we are fixing them.  (And recording them.  For all the paperwork we are going to need to get refunded a portion of our expenses here.)

But, I do have carpet in both bedrooms!  You saw the carpet, right?  Pretty, pretty carpet?