Satisfaction

If you ever need a boost, I recommend laying a pine floor. Unlike our tiling endeavor, we really got into a groove with this part of the project. Liking the rustic look and relative affordability of pine, we ordered our wood from a seller on EBay if you can believe it (I wouldn’t recommend doing this, as we had some scheduling frustrations with the shipping company). Putting the floor down was easy and sort of rhythmic and Zen. We rented a floor nailer, put down the underlayment, and went to work laying down random lengths of tongue and groove boards (at first my Virgo self actually wanted to lay out the whole floor before nailing, but Dominic assured me it wasn’t necessary). The progress was so evident, and the different knots and grains of the wood were so gorgeous. We started in the bedroom, and then did the office, living room, and beginning of a kitchen. Staining (ironically, we stained our pine floor with “English Oak”) and finishing the floor were next, which was also so encouraging and fun because it was a surprise to see exactly how it would turn out. And it’s convenient that our style is “shabby chic,” because that made the inevitable gaps and irregularities in the wood “quaint” rather than “messed up.” We love the floor!