The living room is shaping up. Following a delightful evening of scraping the concrete slab, we began to install the new wood floor. This solid-wood floor is a distressed, hand-scraped, stranded bamboo plank, tough as nails. The salesman actually beat on a piece with the butt end of his utility knife and didn't even mark it. "Kid proof!" (Kid resistant?) Sold! We brought home 6 cases of it for the 160 sq. ft. space.
We've had the flooring sitting in the house for the requisite 72 hours to acclimate while we prepped and painted the room. The options to install this particular material is either nailing or gluing; no floating application is allowed, for some reason. Since we're on a concrete slab, gluing it was our only choice. We chose the premium grade adhesive which would act as a vapor barrier and offer sound deadening. I'd seen some concern about bamboo online, but we bought the solid (stranded) type, and moisture really isn't an issue here in the warm, dry Sonoran desert.
I watched some You Tube videos and read up on install methods, piece o' cake! Any chump could handle this one.
I started with some calculations to see how much I'd have to rip the outside rows down on the table saw. I wanted to split the difference of whatever partial board width would be left over in the last row To keep it uniform. But, unbelievably, it looked like it would fit exactly, exactly 28 planks wide. No ripping!
...divided by 12 feet equals 28 planks.
Not trusting my math, because I tend to make stupid errors, especially when lots of expensive material is involved and there's absolutely no margin for error, I loose laid out a full width of boards across the room. It was a perfect fit! Yay math!!! This floor is was going to look great when done; the color is absolutely beautiful.
I started by shooting my laser line 21" away from the wall, enough for four plank rows. I thought I could get that many down easily in an hour, as recommended by the adhesive manufacturer.
I randomly cut a few starter boards, to avoid a pattern on the floor, and laid out the first four staggered rows behind my the install location. I'd be ready to quick-draw and slap them into the glue, no problem.
The 5 gallon can of adhesive came with trowel blades. There were two options, depending on the thickness of the wood being used.
I snapped one on my brand-spanking new notched trowel. Luckily, it stayed tight through the whole project. The manufacturer recommends replacing the blade with each bucket of adhesive, due to wearing down.
On to the fun! It started with peeling off the top of the adhesive like an old gravy-skin, left out all night after Thanksgiving dinner. The glue looked like harmless cake batter. I'd bang this project out in no time!
Holy crap!
The adhesive is a hot bucket of mess. It merrily took me down a sticky, God-awful trip into downtown horrible-ville. I wore rubber gloves, but I still managed to get that tenacious slop EVERYWHERE! It was the consistency of stringy cake batter, but much worse tasting. I was spattering and slinging droplets of stringy glop with my every move. I got it on my clothing, ...skin,... wood flooring,.. walls,... tools,... knee-pads,...everywhere..
I didn't even take photos during that first horrible application of adhesive. I couldn't fish the camera remote out of my pocket without getting the ghastly adhesive on it. As an added bonus, mineral spirits just barely loosen up the sticky horror of urethane adhesive. I went through three pairs of rubber gloves and half a can of mineral spirits. Take my word for it; it really sucked.
By contrast, the wood went down easily. I pushed it against 1/4" spacers on the walls and taped the tongue and groove planks tightly with wide masking tape. I was able to clean up the little squeeze-outs of adhesive with a damp cloth or my finger (and wipe it on my pants). It wasn't that bad. I could already see that the floor was going to look great.
The process became a steady repetition of steps, including a massive clean-up between each set of four planks.
Cut the boards,... set the laser...
... slop the adhesive down,...smooth it with the flat edge,.... scrape it perpendicular to the plank row with the notched trowel edge,...
... install the planks while my gloves disintegrate ...
... aaaaaand repeat.
I called it quits for the day after three sets, only twelve rows done. A pitiful production my friends.
By the third set, I was doing a lot better with the messy glue, it's a bit of a learning experience. At that point, I no longer considered it diabolically horrible. It improved several levels to just being significantly unpleasant, quite an improvement.
Check back next time, I'm going to wrap this install in one day. Promise.