DIY

My daughter Zoe now has a cork floor in her bedroom. It's called a floating floor, hopefully not because it'll get so wet with global warming that we'll need it as a raft. This is the second floor we've installed in our new to us house, and it went pretty well.

Things I learned.

Builders who put in angles other than 90 degrees are evil. If the odd angle has a doorway in it, and if the angle continues into a closet, they really, really, really hate the person who will be doing the finishing work. Did you know that a mitre box is great for 45 degree cuts, but no others?

If you could commit a sin strongly enough to go to hell, I'd be there. I had severe tool envy while installing quarter round. I really wanted a sliding compound mitre saw and an air powered nail gun. I had a mitre box, a hand saw, 2 hammers and a box of 2" finishing nails.

Quarter round is not corner round. I always thought it was called corner round. Not as funny a mishearing as the girl with colitis walks by, but still wrong. As it's 1/4 of a round stick, the name shouldn't surprise me. But it goes in the corner where the wall meets the floor, so either name fits.

2" nails are WAY too long for 11/16 inch quarter round. Unless you are looking for a real workout with a hammer.

Spackle in a tube is still one of my favourite things. Spackle. Spackle spackle spackle. Still love that word. Maybe one day I will grow up and not giggle every time I hear it. I hope not.

There are more than 4 wrong ways to cut a 45 degree angle, but only one right one.

A mistake doesn't use up much quarter round. The offcuts are amusingly curvy, and surprisingly plentiful.

Despite a total lack of experience installing trim, I can do a good job.

I should take pictures. Right now the cork floor - so beautifully installed people think it's a sheet and not planks - is underneath teen daughter's new furniture and mounds of clothing. Ah well.

I still need to install the reducer strip. If you leave a rough edge of flooring, you need to fix it before installing said strip. I spent over an hour today with a hammer and chisel, evening out the edge. Clearly there is a market for extra wide reducer strips. Unless I am the only person who measures, makes a paper mold of the odd cuts (thanks, oh creative builder, for your not quite perfect 135 degree angles), marks the piece, then adds a half inch or so at the door end. It is lovely and straight now, ready to install the perfectly cut piece of transition strip that will stop the ugly blue carpet from leaving bits all over the house. I think I will screw it in, so it's easy to remove when the carpet goes. The underpad was disintegrating, although I've removed worse.

Next job? Not sure. My credit card is keen for a break. The floor plus new furniture plus Christmas kind of caused it pain, even though most was paid off with the last bill. But boy, is the remaining blue carpet ever ugly...

opinions and rationalization

I am pondering flooring options for our basement.

The subfloor will be happiest with a floating floor, and so will I - I don't want to pay for installation, and I really like mucking around with my hands. It's very satisfying, even when the end result is a tad disappointing. Like the roman shades I made - they worked out perfectly, but they just don't look that great. They are too blah. I need to paint them or something.

My initial plan was cork flooring. It is beautiful. It is $5 a square foot, a tad expensive, but affordable (except to my inner Scot). It installs easily, and is rated for basement installations. But it is prone to nicks, I mean, it is cork - we all have some experience working with it, although it tends to be get this cork out of the way of my wine "work". My children are wonderful, delightful, amazing creatures. Quite possibly the best children ever to exist. Yet I know their understanding of "be careful on the floor" and mine come from different universes. So the floor will get nicked. It will. Absolutely. And the children will spill brightly coloured drinks on it. Think orange pop meets grape pop meets pomegranate juice. Their idea of a quick clean up is to remember to tell me a couple of days later.

Actually, that's optimistic. Connor cleaned his last spill by cutting a hole in the rug, then cutting out an almost-matching hole from a slightly hidden clean part and sticking it in the spill hole. He was so impressed with his ingenuity it was hard to tell him why that's a bad idea. I shudder at what he'd do to the cork, especially knowing my concern that they keep it safe...

Next option. Bamboo. Teragren sells a Leeds certified oh-so-green floating bamboo floor that gets a high rating from Consumer Reports for durability. But it's pricey. How pricey, I don't know - probably about 50% more than cork. That may kill the Scot. More likely it will enrage him and he will start waking me up even earlier. I'll still check it out. Hugh may axe it before the Scot even finds out.

Last click flooring option I'd consider - engineered wood. Not sure if it actually comes as a floating floor, usually it's a glue thing and I don't want to glue anything. Laminate doesn't need glueing, but I have a severe aversion to laminate flooring despite its low cost and ease of installation. U-G-L-Y you ain't got no alibi, you're just UGLY.

So - my options are expensive but durable or fairly expensive but destroyable. Looking at all the dents and holes in our drywall, I think durability has to be high on the "need" side in this decision. Common sense occasionally sucks big time.