Here come the floors

After we conquered our crazy window project Josh and I were able to turn our focus back towards building up the floor. I really hadn’t ever thought much about how many layers go into making a solid and insulated floor, most of you probably haven’t, but I assure you it’s a lot.

To recap: we started by ripping everything out to the dirt then filled in with the gravel, added a vapor barrier and hard insulation, poured a new concrete slab and we still weren’t finished. Next up we got to lay down 2x4 sleepers that we used to attach OSB plywood to. This would eventually be the base for our wood flooring so it was important to make sure that it was level and secure.

I mentioned before that Josh was incredibly pleased with his concrete slab. It really was the very first new and uniform part of the first floor and the only thing that felt clean and fresh but he was fairly comical about adding the sleepers to it. To make sure that they adhere well and don’t buckle you have to first apply a layer of tar and then nail them in with a powder actuated nail gun. While we applied the tar (that the sleepers would go on top of, which the OSB would go on top of, then felt would go on top of and finally wood flooring would go on top of) he constantly scolded me for being “messy” and asked me to please try to keep the concrete clean. By the time the project had taken us late into the night using only table lamps to see he gave that up.

To add a complication we also had a small addition on the front of the house where we had not been able to pour the slab. Basically there was a part of the deck that was enclosed decades before and now it was important for our OSB flooring to come to the exact height of the finished addition (sure that was going to happen). We ended up pretty close but it was certainly the catalyst for a lot of interesting math and less interesting arguments that day.

In the end we finally got it there and we had, for the first time in many years, one level and solid floor. All we needed to do now was install some engineered hardwood floors. Or so we thought… Our next project was a last minute change to our heating systems that would change a lot.