DIY House Remodel - Lay Your Own Wood {or bamboo} Floor - Our friend Elastilon

To make sure everyone is on the same page:

• Yes, we decided to lay our own flooring.
• No, we didn't regret it {for any longer than you usually regret any manual labor}.
• Yes, people thought we were crazy.
• Prepwork takes a looooong time {much longer than my very scheduled brain could comprehend}

We left off somewhere around here:

 So far we have:

• Taken out staples and removed glue residue from the subfloor.
• Removed baseboards.
• Swept, and swept, and swept some more.  
• Laid the moisture barrier.
• Had Dad simultaneously doing other seemingly important tasks {in Kelcie's mind, they were very urgent, hindsight says they probably weren't quite as urgent as originally thought}

So now we are ready to lay some wood {or bamboo} floors - right?

Not for us! 

First, we also laid another prep item: Elastilon* {previously referred to as the Giant Post-It}

Elastilon {We purchased at Home Depot, but you can also purchase on Amazon}

Here is the back story on why we decided an extra $1/sq. ft. was a good investment {something we don't often do}:

We have never laid any kind of wood floor before.  After researching, we didn't feel it would be something impossible to do ourselves.  When we were purchasing our flooring {also from Home Depot - online - in a town without a Home Depot - that was literally delivered by a semi - loooooong story}, they had a "other customers also viewed/purchased/recommended" section.  Usually, I completely bypass this section.  I figure it is just a marketing tool.  And 95% of the time, I still stand by that.  But this ONE day, I was just trying to make sure there wasn't anything else that was absolutely necessary.

We started looking at padding to put underneath our floor {our type didn't come with pre-padding already attached to each plank.  We didn't like any of the colors of the ones that did and generally thought the patterns looked cheaper.  Usually, they are charging more than it would cost to lay a roll of padding similar to Elastilon minus the sticky factor}.  We figured out it was going to be roughly $1/sq ft.  We wanted the padding to help minimize the noise of my clonking around in my heels on the wood floor {I wear a lot of them} and our 110+ lb. dog {even though she was only 80 at the time} chasing her "squirrel" around the house.  We thought it would help tremendously.  We wanted our cake and to eat it too - absolutely - we live in a dream world.  We decided to bite the bullet, because of the additional potential benefits, and spend about an extra $500-700 for the peace of mind and got to researching.

Elastilon was intended to help us cut down on time by keeping the floor "put" while we were laying it, having padding underneath, and let it all shift together should the floor ever shift.  Note: this is still considered a floating floor because it is not actually attached to the subfloor.  However, it will shift as one piece which in our logic, made a lot of sense because we are laying it in such an array of the house and we are on a crawl space.

How WE prepped with Elastilon:
Not to be confused with how every other person on this planet may do it.

1. Lay the Elastilon perpendicular (like a "T" and not two L's) to the direction in which you are going to lay your flooring.  {Don't be like us and instruct and "do" that only to realize we were way too tired to be laying it the night before and completely redo it the next morning}

   

   Perpendicular

2. When you lay the Elastilon, you don't have to staple or tape to anything.  But it is important to leave a "lip" at the beginning and end.  We just left some up against the wall - about a foot or two but we knew we had plenty to spare {we ordered 1 extra roll "just in case"}.  Sorry - I don't have any pictures of this but plenty of the YouTube tutorials show this.
3. Before you lay your first plank of wood/bamboo, you will need to make an "auxiliary piece" {obviously named by the formal instructions and not by me - I would have named it something simple and less scientific like "that spare piece of plastic thing"}.  I don't remember the instructions being particularly descriptive {but that was a few months ago} so I am going to way over-simplify this:

   

   Note: This auxiliary piece is retired from action in this picture {my apologies if you already figured that our}

   
   

   The purpose of the Auxiliary Piece is this: once you lay your first piece, the plastic covering that you have folded back is not going to be long enough yet to slip your adult-sized fingers {or even my child-yet-adult fingers} to get the piece of plastic.  And even if it is, it will not be long enough to pull.  And even if it is, it will rip.  Not that we have done this -- no, as you can tell, we absolutely follow all instructions exactly as they are written. 

   To do this our "right" way {leaving huge room for interpretation}, you will need enough auxiliary pieces to go the entire length of the first wall, hallway, etc. Anywhere that you are starting a new piece of Elastilon.
   

   How to obtain an auxiliary piece: To save you from some perplexing conversations with your husband {or yourself} while starting this and reading the instructions, let me clear something up for you: the instructions give you a way NOT to use an auxiliary piece the very first time because in theory, you don't have any extra pieces yet {it then gives instructions for people who have previously used the product and can use their scrap from said prior experience}.  DON'T use that method.  Save yourself sanity and just cut about 3-4 feet of Elastilon from the roll, take the plastic off, and "waste" that piece of padding.  Not only will it cure your curiosity of what this stuff giant sticky-note is that you just spent extra money on, but it will save you sanity later doing it the "first-timers" way.  It's less than $10 of waste and you will thank me later.

4. For the VERY first row you won't have enough auxiliary to lay it all out along the wall and go from there.  So we advise at least 2 auxiliary pieces if you are being stingy, and pull them up after each plank.  (After this, keep your plastic after you finish a room or area and use that as your auxiliary piece.)
5. The idea is that every plank you lay down, you pull the plastic back so that the sticky side is not exposed to the outside world without a plank of wood stuck to it.  We preferred to lay down about 2-3 rows and then pull the plastic back (providing the "tail" was long enough to leave).  The only caution with this is to make sure you pull evenly or it will tear and you will have to somehow figure out how to get the plastic pulled back again. You would hear random "Ok guys, time to pull" as we were laying.  Once we let it go too long and actually had to remove some rows for a minute (fine because we could replace them and they weren't stuck to anything) because it got too heavy!

   

   Here is a picture after we went through the "pull" phase.

6. Be aware that the term "Post-It" is somewhat misleading.  Elastilon turns permanent after a certain period {read: 20 minutes - 24 hours} of time. You can remove the plank of wood before it turns permanent, but after that, it is nearly impossible.  So MEASURE before you stick!

All of the reviews on Elastilon were pretty great.  Everyone said it saved them time, money, equipment, confusion, and in some cases even a backache {though how they did that, I have no idea - maybe they had their children lay the floor instead?}.  While I think it is far from a miracle body cure, I definitely agree with the time, equipment, confusion, and potentially money portion of the reviews.

This was the view at the beginning of Day 2 of laying

In the next post, we will talk about the things we figured out as we went.  Our tips and tricks if you will.  Although we do think the Elastilon was our secret weapon, it wasn't the only thing we figured out along the way!



*Includes affiliate links.  In no way were we sponsored to promote these items, but we purchased each of them independently and would love to cut out a few of your steps for you - because no one likes spending time doing research someone else has already done.