I'm glad you asked. We worked our butts off installing our beautiful new hardwood floors throughout the kitchen and living room, that's what!
It took all of about 16 hours over the course of two days, with two laborers (namely Paul and myself) to get the floors in. I think if it weren't for the ticking clock on the tool rental from Home Depot we'd never have finished it all this weekend.
If you're considering putting floors in yourself I'd highly recommend that you spring for renting the floor stapler. It runs about $67/day for the stapler + the air compressor (and only about $30/day if you happen to already have an air compressor). You'll also need to buy the nails which run about $13/box. All in all, TOTALLY worth it. Paul and his dad installed hardwoods in the bedrooms of their house in Ireland about 15 years ago and it took them weeks to nail all of the boards by hand. No doubt it would have taken us at least that long if we had attempted the same... not to mention all of the sore thumbs!
The flooring is from Lumber Liquidators and it's the Solid World Oak Handscraped Pre-finished Natural. Just to recap on the series of events that led to the decision to go with this particular flooring... We had originally admired the Virginia Millworks Golden Teak hardwoods which looked very similar but had a lighter finish, which we posted on here. Shortly thereafter when we started taking up the floors we discovered the original wide-plank pine floors beneath about 7 layers of linoleum and we hoped that we could refinish them and bring them back to their original luster. Unfortunately, as we uncovered more of the original floors we realized that they had been too badly damaged by years of repair work. In the meantime we had given the finish some more thought and decided that it would be nice to match the finish on the ceiling beams (which are stained a deep mahogany). So we ended up with the handscraped oak floors instead. As much as I LOVE those teak floors, I think we made the right decision in the end.
We still have a few bits to finish up around the cabinets this weekend and the trim still needs to go in but you can definitely already tell what a difference it will make in the space. See below for a few shots I took at various stages of the work.
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