Transformation of a Cottage Kitchen Part 6: Hardwood Flooring

In part of six of this cottage kitchen transformation series, I'd like to share with you some details of our floor makeover. When we first There is just something about living with subflooring for years that will make you appreciate a good old fashioned shiny floor when you finally get it!moved in, the flooring was a basic beige linoleum. Believe me when I say that the photo below makes the flooring look a lot nicer than it actually was, and you also can't see the hideous hump in the middle of floor which was the result of the previous owners trying to mesh the kitchen addition with the old part of the house. The hump, {or the protruding backbone of my kitchen as I've called it} has always driven me a little bonkers. First of all, I wasn't sure what was causing it. Second of all, I was worried that there was nothing we could do about it and that it would make laying hardwood flooring a nightmare. I remember one day a couple of years back, I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to find out what was going on with the hump, so I ripped out the linoleum with hubs help. Under the lino was a thin layer of plywood, lots of some kind of concrete patch, and this lovely yellow flooring which nearly burned my eyes out.



What a mess that concrete patch was! I think the previous owner was trying to fill in the big gap between the old and new parts of the house. We had to break it all up with a hammer to remove it.




I was so relieved when we removed that yellow lino...Even the ugly subloor looked better in comparison!


We weren't yet ready to pull up the rest of the flooring to fix the hump or install our hardwood {we were getting ready to host a party and it also just wasn't in our budget at the time} so we just painted over the mess with cheap white paint for the time being. Note to readers: Never use cheap white paint to paint your floors. They will never look clean. But I lived with it like this for two years, sometimes biting my tongue about it, but not often.


To my delight, though, the "hump" underwent major surgery recently.


Old subflooring was removed,


...the hump was sanded down as far as we could get it,


... and new plywood subflooring was added.


The hump was just about all gone after all of this, but my mom {who was visiting all the way from California and was promptly put to work} and I added some floor leveler over the plywood to smooth out a couple of dips caused by the slight height difference between the kitchen addition and dining room. I must say that at the point the photo below was taken, my middle child declared that "our kitchen floor is getting uglier by the day".

See that weird, colorfully wrapped thing hanging from the ceiling? That's the light above our kitchen island that we kept whacking our heads on for two weeks. I thought that if we covered it with something bright and patterned {an old vintage sheet}, we'd still have some sense left by the end of the project.

Yeah...that didn't work.


I was still reluctant to believe that all this subfloor prep work would totally solve the height difference problem, but I can say that now that the 3/4 inch hardwood has been installed, you would never, ever know that we had a hump backed kitchen. Surgery was a complete success!

Then it was time to lay the hardwood! We had actually had our new flooring for quite awhile {2 or 3 years} so you can imagine how happy I was to get the wood out of the garage and onto the floor! But I was nervous, too, because we had never laid hardwood before and wasn't sure if we could pull it off.

So this is where we began... I was hoping our measurements were correct so that we would have nice, straight flooring. Getting the first row right was very important! I had visions of us getting halfway finished and having to rip everything out to start over due to mathematical errors! But thankfully, that didn't happen. We found a million different techniques online to make sure that first row was straight {because you can't run the first row of boards off the wall - most walls are not straight}.

We got our first straight row going by finding the dead center of the room and marking that center point on the floor by a drawing a vertical, straight line down There is smoke coming out my ears now...I hate math!the center of the kitchen. Then we measured off at various points from that center line to the walls, making tick marks. We left a 3/4 inch gap at the wall to allow for expansion {this is very important!}. Let's say your room is 20 feet wide. The center point would be at 10 feet. You would measure from that center point to the right and to left all the way to your walls, but minus 3/4". That would be 9 ' 1/4". { 9' 11 1/4" + 9' 11 1/4" + 3/4" + 3/4" = 20' }. There is smoke coming out my ears now...I hate math!

{Edited to add: Thanks, Julie, for helping me correct my math error, hehe! Smoke, I tell ya! Out the ears! The above math is now correct!}

We drew another straight vertical line near the walls at the tick marks we made as a guide. This gave us a straight line to begin our first row, and good thing, too, because our walls definitely are not straight! {I know this was clear as mud...Make sure you check with some professional sites before you tackle your hardwood flooring project!}

The first couple of rows were face nailed but after that, we used a flooring nailer to nail into the sides where the nails would be hidden. By the way, we bought our flooring nailer on Craigslist for the cost of renting one! If you have a whole house to do like we do, it might be worth keeping your eyes peeled for one.

A few other tips: Make sure you work from several boxes at once to get a good variation in color tones and grain. If not, you may be able to notice that one section of your floor came from one box and another section came from another box.

Also, be very selective about each and ever piece that is laid. Make sure it's not the same length as the piece you just laid or the piece beside it. You'll want to stagger your planks according to the different sizes you have to work with. We found it helpful to create separate piles of planks according to their length. Nothing would be worse than to finish your flooring and realize that you have about 5 boxes worth of short planks left over!

Another important tip: There should be at least six inches between end seams. For instance, when you lay a row of planks, any end seams in the next row should not be less than six inches from the seams in the first row. Not only will this produce a more interesting pattern, it will add to the stability of your flooring.


We used Bruce 3/4" thick oak in the Marsh finish. {We're told it's the same as Gunstock, more or less.} Part of me really wanted dark wood flooring, but having two dogs and three kids, I knew I needed something that would hide dirt and hair well without me having to sweep myself silly.

It adds the warmth I've been longing for for so long...



Not to mention the shine is amazing! There is just something about living with subflooring for years that will make you appreciate a good old fashioned shiny floor when you finally get it!


I'm looking forward to seeing how the kitchen flooring will look against white trim and beadboard.



Hubs told me that at the end of this month, we'll be laying hardwood in the living room and down the hall. I'm excited but I have to gear myself up for this project because it is tiring work. Hubs does the hard part, nailing the planks into place with the nailer and I pick out the pieces and cut them to size if need be. It's not complicated - it just requires a lot of time on your hands and knees!

For now, this will end my cottage kitchen transformation series. If you haven't see them already, you can take a look at how the kitchen is currently decorated, though we aren't finished with all the kitchen projects. What is left to do in the kitchen? Adding beadboard, finishing trim, a fireplace mantel and faux fireplace in the dining area, and corbels under the top kitchen cabinets. Those projects will be added to this series as they are completed.:)

{Did you miss Part 5 of Transformation of a Cottage Kitchen?: Check out Part 5: Cottage Kitchen Lighting

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