This was the last room in the house that had the original builder's carpet from 20+ years ago. The biggest part of the job was prepping the floor. If anybody else is looking to do this make sure that after you remove the carpeting and padding you go around the room on your hands a knees looking for all of the staples that held the padding down. There's hundreds of them and if you don't remove them the new underlayment won't lay flat. Also walk around the room on every board and where all of the boards meet to find those that move or squeak and either nail or screw them down.Day 1 was spent removing the old carpet and padding. The room is 12 x 15, I cut the carpet in half, pulled it up and rolled it then dragged it out to the garbage. Pulling up the carpet and padding took about 15 minutes. Then I spent another 2 hours removing the old staples and nail strips, then screwing down the loose plywood boards. Then I laid down new underlayment, stapled it every few feet and taped the seams together.I laid out the first few boards and realized that if I kept going in that direction (horizontal across the entry door frame) I'd need to do a lot of cuts to fit the corners and cutouts by the closet. So I flipped it around the other way. I only needed to make one cut with the table saw for 1 corner. Once the first few boards were in place it went pretty quick, I was able to use 3 or 4 boards across the middle and needed to cut the end piece to fit the other side. I was able to use the other half of the cut piece to start the next row so there wasn't a lot of scrap. I spent about an hour laying down the first few rows then called it a day.The second day I picked up where I left off and was done in about 2 hours. I needed to make one more cut with a jig saw to go around the heating pipe for the baseboard heating. Thankfully the very last row (against the wall) fit in pretty tight so I didn't need to rip any of the boards.I used 12mm laminate planks from the "Home Decorators Collection" at Home Depot, it was ~$30 a case and I needed 11 cases in total. This planks go together easily, basically you fit them together then push down and they snap into each other. I needed to use a hammer & pull bar on only one piece on the last row against the wall where there wasn't a lot of room to wiggle it into place.To finish it up I'm going to install saddles across the doorways, then install new baseboard and doorway molding.Have a look and let me know what you think!https://ift.tt/2FqbZl2 via /r/DIY https://ift.tt/2Wp3E8b
