Like the family room, the furniture was moved to one side of the room. The carpet, pad and baseboards were removed for the first half of the living room and dining room. I screwed down the OSB before I installed the 1/8” lauan plywood. The plywood was also screwed down. I undercut the drywall to create my 1/2” expansion gap. I was ready to install the flooring.
Before I would glue down the floor, I dry fit the first 4 rows to make sure the flooring was ready when I applied the glue. As I walked on the floor, the flooring had the feel like it was already glued down. No crunchy noise. A solid feel was underfoot. Maybe I did not need to glue the floor. I called over Efiwym and asked her to walk on the floor. I asked what she thought. She concurred. The flooring did not need any glue. I was going to install this floor sans glue and plastic underlayment. I would return the two buckets of expensive glue.
The floor in the living room had a high spot near the dining room opening. It probably was the result of the house settling. I noticed the flooring had settled towards the outside wall in the back of the dining room. It was not anything major, but it did create gaps between the flooring and the underlayment. You could feel a little bounce as you walked in those spots. I thought about shimming these areas but decided against it.
The project moved forward without issues until I needed to re-install the baseboards. At floor level you could see gaps between the flooring and the molding. The floor was wavier than I thought. There was not a fix without shimming those areas. I was going to live with it. In fact, from eye level, you could not see the gaps.
We moved the furniture back with the felt pads in place. We purchased rugs for both rooms. You now can only see slivers of the floor between the furniture and the wall. So why did we replace the carpeting with a wood floor so we could cover it up with a rug?
With a set of knee pads and some knowledge of click and lock flooring, this project was now complete.
