Sing me a Song, You’re the Piano Man!

Aaaannnnddd I’m back.  What did I miss?  December?  ALL OF DECEMBER?!  Wait…does that mean its 2018?!  IT DOES?!  Geeezzzz…..

Well to pick up where I left off…for the first few weeks of December I stayed VERY busy.  Christmas preparations/festivities and laying floors at night right along side the rest of our normal life.  Phew!

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you’ve seen that I’ve started laying the hardwoods that I bought in November (you can read that fun adventure HERE), went to the White House, laid more floor and went to the Kennedy Center with my in-laws and family friends for a great USO sponsored show.  It truly is the most wonderful and busy time of the year.  And then I laid more floor.

With the piano delivery looming, I had to get these floors down!  After a few days of procrastination motivating myself to overcome my fears of the unknowns of floor laying, I finally filled up the air compressor, loaded the nail gun, repeated my three-year-old’s mantra for going into dark rooms, “Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared.” and started to put the first floor board down.  That mantra really works!

So. Much. Easier. Than. I. Thought.  $13k?!  Flooring installers wanted $13k to do what I was doing?!  Craziness!  Or maybe I am in the wrong business…?

I’d give a tutorial on how I laid the floors, but I would just be transcribing the Lowe’s how-to YouTube video.  So here it is instead:

2 rows turned into 12, turned into 22, turned into DONE.  I’m serious!  It was so quick and easy.  Yes, I made a few mistakes along the way and learned some tricks of the trade.  My back hurt for about a week, I pulled out about 17.3 splinters (that .3 was a doozy) and maybe cursed a few more times than my English Grandmother would have liked.  I won’t lie, it is very tedious, but nothing about laying a floor is rocket science.  You have to be particular (OCD people, you’ve got this!), you have to have the right tools for the job and you need some good audio books or playlists to help entertain you along the way.  Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is a fantastic read (or listen!)

The piano movers called on the 6th of December and said that they’d be in town delivering on the 9th.  Nothing like a hard deadline to move things along!  So I finished up the floor, laid down a carpet for the piano to sit on and waited for them to arrive.  The first snow fall of the season showed up about 9 hours before the piano movers did.  I tried calling their St. Louis office to tell them to just wait another day and not fight this storm, but I couldn’t get a hold of them.  They showed up around 6:00, I had a hot pot of chili waiting for them.  It took three burly guys and all of the Morton’s salt I had left in my pantry to avoid slipping on the ice to get this beautiful piano up the 13 steps of my front walk.  But they did it!  #respect.  Here it sits!  Don’t let it distract you from those beautiful floors now.  I know its an amazing antique piano, but look at those floors!The original ebony and ivory keys, the dark hand carved columns/legs and my Great Grandma’s Royal Dalton lamp that has sat on top of the piano for as long as my memory serves.  I tried to show the boys my dusty skills, but the piano needed to be tuned in the worst way.  We’ll just use that as the excuse, shall we?  Again, look at those floors!!!

A lot of work left to be done to the walls, but my first attempt at laying hard wood floors is DONE!  And I have this beautiful piano to show for it!  That doesn’t relate unless you read the whole post.

A few end notes:

1. Total Cost – $375 for material + $15 for staples + $0 floor nailer (borrowed), + audible.com credit for Beautiful Ruins audiobook = $390-ish.
2. Biggest Lesson Learned – Having the Hubs on FaceTime is a valuable tool!  Especially when attempting to nail in the first two boards only to have him help me discover that I was nailing them in backwards.  Thanks, babe!
3. Best Tip – Some boards are warped or you might go over kilter by like 1/16″, be sure to apply equal pressure on the nailer to keep any creeping gaps from occurring. Sometimes I banged the s!*& out of the nailer to get the board to lay flush next the other.  Elbow grease and grit are NOT sold in Home Depot.
4. Most Favorite Part – Feeding the piano movers chili on the crazy cold night while listening to my boys play me their version of jingle bells.

Cheers!

-A.A.