Moving into a new office

We had the upstairs bedroom that used to be our daughter's painted about a month ago. This was exciting because I've always done my own interior painting, so to walk into a room that was magically transformed into new colors with no effort on my part (other than writing a check) was a treat.

The only step remaining before I can move into that room is to screw down the floorboards.

When I built the house, I used wide southern yellow pine planks for the floor, laid over black plastic and attached with common nials from a regular framing nail gun. I figured the combination of the little burrs on each nail, as the gun breaks off the wires connecting the nails in a magazine, and the glue on the shaft of the nail, which is activated by the heat of shooting it into the wood, would hold the boards. Nope. For years, the floors in our bedrooms have creaked. I screwed down the downstairs floors early on and had them sanded and refinished, but the upstairs bedroom floors continue to whine and moan when walked on. So as each room is repainted, I will fix the floors.

Trouble is, with the busy holiday season and my innate ability to get distracted by other things, the floors haven't been fixed yet. The screws are ready but I guess my resolve isn't. I should probably be doing that now instead of writing this, but this seems to be more fun. Kneeling for hours on a hard floor that you thought you'd done right the first time is an easy task to put off, at least for me.

I'd hire someone to do the floors, but that's too much money for a project that can be done relatively quickly. I'm thinking this may be a Christmas weekend project. If I can tear myself away from going to the movies, visiting with family and friends, and inhaling one more piece of pie or glass of eggnog (I make a mean eggnog), I may get it done then.

Note the upholstery. Click here to see more cartoons.                   

For my next house, I want tot rip 1/4" plywood--probably oak--into wide strips and glue them down to the subfloor, then add a couple of coats of different stain: one for the basic color and another to give them a worn look. Then a few coats of water-based polyurethane and I'll have old-looking, inexpensive, durable wide board floors that don't, and won't, squeak. I did several floors like this for clients in my old carpenter/handyman days, and they all worked well and saved thousands of dollars. And I like "getting away" with something like that. I guess it goes back to my theater days, building sets and props out of cheap materials and making them look expensive. I did a beautiful-looking mandolin from foam core board and the type of elastic thread in the waists of underpants.

But I digress. And the fact that I start out talking about finishing a floor project and end up writing about underpants--and that I easily do this sort of thing all the time--is why the floor still lies there, waiting for me. It's not like it doesn't complain--I just don't listen very well.