Haha! If you liked that click-bait title, you’ll love the weekly Here’s Who We Are:
Welcome again to Saturday Morning Home Repair blogging, where we talk about fixing houses and the things in them that are supposed to work for us. An ad hoc cadre of building professionals and gifted amateurs attempt to answer questions that arise from readers, and offer encouragement and advice for those inclined to do things for themselves, if they can. We all do a lot of things, collectively, and can probably help out with insights from our vast experience.
Or sometimes, we just gab.
Hey, everyone. Been a long time since I’ve opened up the shop around here. Last week eeff was lamenting the lack of writers, and I realized we have some stuff that we’ve done that I could write up. Quite a bit, in fact. We’ll start with revisiting a previous project to see how it’s holding up.
About five years ago, we installed laminate flooring on the main floor. The original diary is here. You can check out the just-installed pictures there.
Okay, five years on, these boards have held up amazingly well. I could take more pictures, but they’d look pretty much just like the ones in the other diary, plus a nice layer of dust and a bunch of annoying little dots because we have a cat the sneezes constantly. There is one spot that has scratches, and that was just a sad bit of inattention on our part. We didn’t notice that the felt piece had come off of the right front of His Lordship’s Archie Bunker chair, and the chair leg scratched up a board or two:
If anyone has a recommendation for a particular brand of scratch repair pen, I’d happily take some advice. Normally, it’s underneath the chair, so I don’t think about it.
One concern that was brought up in the other diary was the edges “flaking.” That hasn’t happened with this batch. Some of the edges are — hmmm — raised slightly, but they’ve been that way from the git go. It’s a result of over-enthusiasm on my brother-in-law’s part. When the boards were installed, he kept thinking that they needed one more WHAM! when they definitely didn’t. DO NOT OVER DO IT WHEN YOU’RE TIGHTENING THE FIT!! But, they’ve held together just fine, and the edges aren’t really noticeable unless I point them out. You can see a raised area just to the left of center below. And those dots? Stupid cat.
Cleaning is easy. A light spray with a liquid flooring cleaner, and a slightly damp mop (I use a cloth on a Swiffer type mop), and the floor is nice and shiny again.
Bottom line is that we are very happy with the way this particular project is aging.
What’s up at your house?