I Love Floor
This is an exciting day! We have floors! Or at least what is the start of a floor. It has been 7 months since I have felt a solid floor under my feet in our attic. Instead, we had to balance on floor joists when we moved around. This may not sound so bad, but keep in mind that we were moving new, 10′ floor joists around up there, as well as 25 sheets of subfloor and 60 sheets of heavy drywall. And anytime we lost our balance, our foot broke though the ceiling below us (see post below for image). It could’ve been worse, we could’ve fallen through the space between the floor joists and landed on the floor in the room below us. Luckily, that has not yet happened. But we are not finished putting in the floor.
The top image is an attempt to illustrate what it’s like to balance on the floor joists while looking at the room below you. That’s our hallway down there. The second image captures our progress with the floor, as well as one of the three piles of drywall we have in the attic. As of today, we have about 2/3 of the floor installed. The last picture is of my husband installing a piece of the subfloor. It’s been a slow process involving lots of measuring and cutting to get pieces to fit against the edges of the roof line, around a chimney and so on. It’s also involved lots of bickering, but I think at this point we’re entitled to that.
Important things we learned about installing subfloor: 1) Measure twice, cut once. 2) Each end of the subfloor has to sit on a floor joist. Measure and cut accordingly. 3) There are no 90 degree angles or straight edges in an old house. Just accept it. 4) It’s one big puzzle. If one sheet is installed a bit crooked, all the rest of the pieces will reflect that. 5) If you don’t really know what you’re doing, be sure to set aside a lot of time for this project. A lot.