Late last week we finally began installing our hardwood floors at the new house. The work is going well—Sherry and I are doing it ourselves—but it has proven to be a very time-intensive project. That’s not ideal when you’re already pressed for time: we’re scheduled to move in this weekend and want to have four bedrooms and a long hallway fully finished by then. Once we’ve made more progress and have a clearer sense of the process, we’ll share a detailed play-by-play of the installation. For now, here’s a still-dusty photo of the first room we officially completed: our master bedroom (we still need to install baseboards and quarter round).
Even with the pressure of the timeline, the most nerve-wracking part of this project was not the installation itself but simply getting the wood home. Lumber Liquidators called to let me know the order was ready for pickup. Clara was napping, so Sherry stayed home with her and I drove off to rent the truck the store recommended for transporting the large order. Renting a pickup was cheaper than delivery, and the flooring definitely wouldn’t fit in our car. I also stopped at Lowe’s to pick up quarter-round molding for the rooms we planned to tackle—Lowe’s requires a purchase to rent their truck, so it worked out.
At Lumber Liquidators I was surprised by the massive stack of boxes being moved by forklift. Seeing all of it at once made me glad I’d rented the truck. But as they lowered the load onto the truck bed, I noticed one tire was sitting lower than the others under the weight. It wasn’t flat, just compressed more than the rest, and immediately put me on edge. The staff arranged the load to take pressure off that tire and we agreed it looked stable enough to drive the short three miles to the house—slowly and carefully.
That three-mile trip felt like an eternity. The stack of boxes was high and a bit unbalanced, so every turn made the load sway. I crawled through turns at five miles per hour with hazards on, trying to steady the load. After a few cautious maneuvers I learned how to shift the weight back toward the center, which eased some of my anxiety. I’d pictured an overturned truck with boards scattered across the road, so every small improvement was a relief.
Then it started to rain.
Sudden downpours are the last thing you want when transporting unwrapped hardwood flooring. The boxes were protected only by cardboard, so when the rain came I pulled over and used a large plastic drop cloth that a previous renter had left in the truck. That saved the shipment from getting soaked, but securing the plastic in a hurry created another worry: the wind began to catch it and the tarp started flapping loose. I had to stop again to remove the cover before it could tear or catch on anything.
At that point I had barely made it a mile from the store. My heart was racing, but the remainder of the drive was thankfully uneventful. I arrived at the new house a little frazzled but with the flooring and truck intact.
Then reality hit: unloading. I hadn’t planned for that step. Sherry and Clara were still home, so I was on my own. With no forklift to assist, I wrestled each box down from the truck and carried them into the house. There were fifty boxes, each weighing about 56 pounds and roughly five feet long. They had to come down from the truck bed, up a few steps, and through a narrow garage doorway before I could stack them in the dining room to acclimate prior to installation. It took about an hour of steady work to get them all inside. Between the stress of the drive and hauling roughly 2,800 pounds of wood into the house, I felt I had definitely earned a rest.
The day after delivery Clara enjoyed exploring the new flooring laying on top of the subfloor—hopefully she’ll enjoy it even more once the boards are installed and the room is finished. Today we’re continuing the installation, aiming to get more rooms completed before move-in. Installing hardwood floors ourselves has been challenging and sometimes stressful, but it’s also incredibly satisfying to see the progress unfold and to know we’re doing this work with our own hands.