Kelly and Thorulf, our Retired Greyhounds

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Kelly and Thorulf supervise our efforts to put in a new floor, or maybe they were just confused about why the furniture kept getting rearranged.  Our house came with brand new carpet, but after 2 years with dogs, it had turned from white to gray despite monthly steam cleanings.

Removing the carpet.  The trash pickup failed to take the carpet away, but someone came and got it the next day.  Hopefully it found a good home, perhaps to pad someone's garage or workshop.

With the carpet gone, we had to remove the 10,000 staples that once held the carpet pad down.  We were pleased that the subfloor was in such good shape, I only had to level a few spots.

We're getting to the dog pictures, I promise. 

A few weekends later, it was time for the good part.  We pushed all the furniture to one side of the room and started with the hardwood floor.  The reason it is dark outside is because, the first day, we could not find a power nailgun to rent and had to use the hammer-driven one you see here.  It was slow going.

When we got past the halfway point, we installed felt pads on all the furniture and moved it to the finished side of the room, so we could continue laying the floor.  This was the second day, when we found a pneumatic nail gun to rent, which sped things up a lot.  Nevertheless, we worked into the evening on the second day.

The dogs supervised our efforts from their headquarters on the couch.  They actually slept through the loud hammering, air compressor running just outside, etc.

The sock on Thorulf's leg is to keep him from licking a scratch on his leg.  It works quite well, and the elastic strap over his shoulder keeps it in place except when he runs.  Note that the dogs are learning to share the couch better than they used to.

What did we learn from our hardwood flooring endeavor? 

• Manual nail guns and power nail guns use different nails, but the store will take back unopened boxes, which is good since the nails are $15/box. 
• Manual nail guns are slightly faster than a claw hammer and nail setting punch, but it takes two people to operate the nail gun accurately (manual or powered).
• When the box of hardwood flooring says 28.5 square feet, they really mean 25 square feet of actual finished floor minus any waste or damage you incur.  The 28.5 measurement apparently includes the interlocking tabs and air space in the box.  It is wise to buy much more floor than you need.  We bought 265 square feet for a 240 square foot room, had 9 square feet of waste (we did keep track), and still came up a bit short. 
• If you have so much trash that you put out more than one trash can, there is a 50/50 chance that the Fayetteville NC trash pickup will empty only one container and leave the other untouched.  If anything won't fit in the container and is on the ground, they won't take that either.