Flooring, flooring and more flooring

I am realizing just how much flooring I have to do.  I finished the first bedroom and it came out great.  This is the smallest bedroom which is about 12 x 12.  It took about 10 hours of working to get the floor laid in there.  I used plain cedar 1x4s as the baseboards and gave them a wash of thin white paint.  In order to seal them I was going to brush on polyurethane but that seemed to take away most of the white tint.  So I bought a can of spray-on poly which did a better job.  (Although maybe I should look again after the paint high has worn off! Mental note - future baseboards should not be sprayed in the garage no matter how cold it is!)

So this bedroom is pretty much done.  I installed the basebards and caulked them, installed the curtains and put back the closet doors.  Once we move the mattress and dresser in there and install a new door, the room will be ready to go.


Now on to the main living area.  This floor installation will be done over an existing tile floor so I am floating the wood floor over it.  That means no adhesive, just gluing the planks together with a type of wood glue.  This type of flooring installation is much easier, in my opinion, because you can start and stop whenever you like.  There is no sticky adhesive all over everything and no timing concern with getting the floor laid before the adhesive sets.  However, I think the floating floor delivers a lesser final product.  Since the floor isn't attached to anything, it can get pockets that stick up a little.  That makes the floor sound and feel funny when you walk on it.  The glue-down floor feels much more solid.

This room is quite a bit bigger than the smaller bedroom.  I am starting on the longest wall which is over 35 feet long.  So far I have spent about 8 hours on it and this is as far as I have gotten.  There have been some precise cuts around two doorways that slowed me down a little and the pad that goes under the flooring has been difficult to deal with.  I am hoping things will go a little faster now.  When I do the mathmatical calculations, I have already laid more floor in this room than the bedroom, and in less time.  However, I am only about 1/4 of the way done. For someone like me who needs to see those results as a reward for hard work, this room is proving to be difficult.  And don't get me started on my aching knees and back....

Maybe I should just appreciate the ease of this glue together floor because all of the rest will be the messy adhesive kind.