Hardwood Floors Part 2: Installation

After ripping up all of the old flooring and cleaning up the mess, we are ready to start laying the new floor.  The primary dilemma that I had at this point was choosing which wall to start from.  After some input from Nathan, I decided to start from the North wall, labeled section 1 in the diagram to the right.  This meant though that I would have to carefully align the starting edge of sections 2 and 3 so that they would line up when it came time to join them together.
Laying the Floor
The first few rows were difficult because it was hard to get them weighted in place to keep them from sliding around, but after the fourth row or so the floor had enough weight along with the sandbag to hold itself in place:

Progress after day 1:

The second day went much faster:

This is all we would get done before Christmas:

After a brief hiatus during the Christmas holiday, we finished the dining room and were ready to rip up the carpet in the living room and start laying sections 2 and 3:

Bad Wiring

I had a frustrating disruption from this project when I went to turn on the vacuum cleaner and all the lights went out.  It turns out that running the ordinary indoor vacuum on a living room outlet blew the wiring.  Whoever made a clumsy attempt to finish out the attic space over the garage took the lazy route when running the electrical wiring.  To get a dedicated breaker for the window AC unit, they just stole the breaker for the living room and double-lugged the living room line onto another breaker.  This made for a bad connection and a fire hazard.  In order to get on with my project I just disconnected and capped the attic line and restored the living room to its original breaker, but I have since done a proper fix and installed an additional breaker.

Since I was worried about moisture around the back door, I decided to coat the underside of the boards with polyurethane.  I laid out all of the pieces I was going to use in that corner and numbered them, and Amy was kind enough to polyurethane them for me.

The living room is coming along:

Finished sections 2 and 3 in the living room and closet and ready to match up with the dining room.  After just a few adjustments, they lined up great:

With all the rooms connected, it is beginning to look nice:

Finally, I laid the last piece and all the flooring is down:

Up next: Baseboards