New Allure Flooring in the Study |

What. A. Day.

Laying floor is a lot easier when your home is empty. I tried to pile stuff as out of the way as I could, but it was really hard. I don’t have that much stuff, but it didn’t feel like that at all today!

First thing I did was move everything to the passenger side of the study. I laid two planks and then reality hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t do the floor in the study without pulling up the flooring in the dressing room. That’s what took the better part of the day. The middle planks came up easily, but the edges were a nightmare to deal with since they went under walls, the vanity, the shower… My strategy ended up being using a chisel to score the wood, a pry bar to snap the board as close to the edge as possible, and then a combination of the chisel and pliers to get as smooth an edge as possible. I pulled up only as much floor as I needed to get the study done and will continue tomorrow.

Even with all that effort, I’m glad I pulled up that wood floor. It had reached its peak. There was water damage right through to the subfloor near the shower. Nothing major, but I could see how water had infiltrated. I also found a speckling of mould behind the trim along the base of the shower. Yup, this was one major project that I can completely justify.

Once the floor in the study was done, I had the desk left. My initial idea isn’t going to work. I had wanted to simply cut out a notch in the top to accommodate the little pop out in the corner, but the way the desk is built won’t allow that without major work on my part. For that much effort, I’d rather go out and buy a little secretary or something. I decided to just reassemble the desk with a gap between it and the wall and then sleep on the problem since I have to do a couple of hours of work tonight.

Allure is incredibly easy to install. What I love most about it is that all you need to cut it is a sharp knife and a metal straight edge. You can get down on your hands and knees with a plank and a piece of paper to use a as a template (see below) and do all your cutting and fitting right there.

The only thing that’s really finicky about it is that it attracts dust since the planks are held together with a glue strip. Since I left the dressing room half done, I had to lay down wax paper (provided in the the box) to cover all the glue strips and then weigh that all down to keep the cats off it.

I’m pretty pleased with how the installation turned out. The wood look wound up being more forgiving than the tile. I found some edges aren’t quite tight enough, but I’ve never seen a wood floor without gaps so I figure the small imperfections make the vinyl look even more like real wood.

Tomorrow, I’m going to focus on getting the computer area buttoned up and then take advantage of the promised sunshine to get a mountain of stuff out of the rig. That should free up enough space for me to finish up the dressing room floor on Thursday and start on the kitchen. Having used a box and a half already, I can tell that my flooring budget is going to go through the roof (my estimates are now seven boxes), so I’ve decided that painting is definitely not going to happen in Campbell River. That’s okay, the climate’s not right for it anyway.