Building another bedroom.

[NorthernRedneck]

Room #2 is making good progress considering we only evicted our oldest daughter from it this morning. My oldest son and I worked on it all day. I painted while he chiseled away at all the edge staple strips from the carpet that were glued on.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

I hauled out a couple pieces of laminate flooring to lay down as an initial impression. Looks alright but my back says a big FU to that for today. Now sitting in the hot tub. I'm taking a break from the basement tomorrow to do an overdue brake job on my wife's expedition.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

Have I mentioned how much I hate laminate flooring? Hate Hate Hate it! Sure, it looks all fine and pretty when it's down. I started out ok this morning and got a couple rows of tiles all snapped together. Then things went south quickly and before I threw the whole works out in the garbage trailer, I called it quits after only installing 4 rows and f'ing up the edge tonge and groove on a couple pieces creating WW3 between me and the missus who came down to inspect and tell me that I didn't know what I was doing. It basically ended in me telling her that she is off on Saturday so if she's such an expert laminate flooring installer, guess what she's doing. I'll cut the stuff but my back is done. My legs are sore. This should be interesting.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

We got a good start on the flooring today once I went to home depot and picked up an installation kit with shims and an edge block built specifically for laminate so you don't F up the locking lips. Once we got a system going, it went quick. It's my son's room so he was the one down on his knees pounding. I took care of running back and forth to the garage to cut pieces and bring in the tiles to lay down.

 

[bczoom]

A little late now but why don't you have a tile cutter for laminate?
I've done 750 sq/ft vinyl laminate in a day on my old back. Yea, you need the pounder tool and a cutter but then it goes really fast.

 

[Melensdad]

A little late now but why don't you have a tile cutter for laminate?
I've done 750 sq/ft vinyl laminate in a day on my old back. Yea, you need the pounder tool and a cutter but then it goes really fast.

I have a laminate "guillotine" cutter. Looks sort of like a tile cutter. Snaps a clean cut on the laminate flooring. Works with vinyl and wood laminates. Very quick, and no mess.

 

[bczoom]

I have a laminate "guillotine" cutter. Looks sort of like a tile cutter. Snaps a clean cut on the laminate flooring. Works with vinyl and wood laminates. Very quick, and no mess.

That's what I have and meant to say. Awesome tool.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

I'm just using my radial arm saw and table saw to do the length cuts. For around the doors small cuts I used a jigsaw. It's going ok now that we have it figured out. Lol

 

[NorthernRedneck]

I have a laminate "guillotine" cutter. Looks sort of like a tile cutter. Snaps a clean cut on the laminate flooring. Works with vinyl and wood laminates. Very quick, and no mess.

If I was doing a whole house or basement I would have looked around for a laminate cutter. My back says that I will probably never be installing laminate flooring again after this room is done. Same thing with a tile cutter. I did look around for one when I was considering doing the backsplash myself in our kitchen. Instead, we just had an installer come out to give us a quote to install them. I know my limits.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

My son and I finished the flooring today. Afterwards, I painted all the baseboard trim to prepare for installation after. Then it's just remounting the closet doors and some basic electrical. Everything is beige in the room presently. I'm switching out the plugs for white ones and replacing the light fixtures.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

I'll add that for the laminate flooring, I was dammed close on my estimate for how many boxes we'd need. I had f'd up the edges of 4 pieces but we were able to reuse them on an edge row that I already had to trim down. One piece was just messed up on 3 sides but I was able to salvage a corner of it to use as an edge piece in the archway. All that said, I had 3 good pieces of laminate left over from 15 cases. And now we are pros at laying it down.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

I put in a couple hours after supper and installed the trim and closet doors. I'm painting them in place. They'll be white. I already did the back sides.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

I'm almost done. Literally and figuratively. I started at 7:30am painting the closet doors then in between coats drying, I flipped the power off to the room and swapped out 2 light fixtures, 4 plugs, and a switch. The bedroom door needs a third coat of paint and the walls need a final touch-up and it's done.