DIY Umami Mart: New Floors!

I have to admit, I had been dreading redoing the floors for the shop. We all knew it had to be done -- the reality was that once we signed the lease, we were no longer a pop-up. The shop had to "grow up."

Without going into the technical details, we had received a few bids for this project and decided that installing the floors ourselves was the only real option for our budget. "Nonstop" and "Getting-It-Done" are Kayoko and my respective middle names, and redoing the floors was a good way to test this. But Kayoko and I had never installed floors before, so we knew we needed help.

With our good friends Devin and Joe at the helm (they built the majestic pieces of furniture for our shop when we first opened), we felt confident that this project would be manageable. Devin, Joe and Johnny gave up two days of their holiday weekend to help us get the job done. We can't thank Devin, Joe and Johnny enough. Every single one of our ten hands was necessary to lay each piece of flooring and baseboard down to finish the floors in less than two days.

To install the threshold for the entryway, we had to move our behemoth door off the hinges and lay it down on our register. I have new respect for our door. It is solid wood, heavy and very old.

The first step to installing these pergo click floors was to establish a center line. The plan was to work from the middle out.

Note for next time, invest in knee pads:

As we got to the ends, it was time to cut and fit.

Joe, sawing three panels at a time. Johnny had his concentration-face on all weekend.

Devin sawing along vertically to fit lay down the last row

I LOVE power tools.

In reality, there was a lot of time that elapsed before this happened... installing the last piece!