We have been working on putting the hardwood down on the kitchen floor this week.  Our son, Joel, came over and helped us decide how to lay it.  We can’t lay it vertically as I’d planned, because as Joel and Dennis discovered, the room isn’t square.  In fact, it is so out of square that if we laid the wood vertically, we’d end up with more than an inch gaps on either side against the walls that would have to be filled in, and would still show when the baseboards were put in.

It took two hours of measuring and discussing before we decided we had to lay it horizontally, across the width of the kitchen.  It doesn’t line up with the living floor, which is a shame, but there was no help for it.

There’s one good thing about laying the hardwood horizontally.  It will give the kitchen the illusion of more width.  The room is not especially narrow, but certainly it’s longer than it is wide by about 9 feet, and when the cabinets go in on the side walls, it’ll narrow the room visually even more.  How the horizontal strips will look with the backsplash laid in a vertical pattern on the side walls, I have no idea.  We’re just going to have to see.

It took some finessing to even start putting the wood down against the transition strip that deals with the change in level from the living room to the kitchen elevation.  But Joel got us started, and we’ve been creeping along every evening after work.  Dennis does the nailing; I do the layout and cutting on the chop saw.  I’d never used a chop saw before, but Joel gave me some basic training, and now I’m good to go.  Who’d a thunk it, me using any power tool other than a sander?

Last night, Joel came over and helped us handle the tricky section by the door, where the room goes badly out of square.  We decided we had to do a little inset pattern by the door and run the flooring the opposite way.  None of us were sure how it was going to turn out, but I love it.  Joel is going to notice where it isn’t square every time he comes in the door, but I really doubt anybody else will notice it.  I can’t really see it myself!

We had to have most of the floor done by Friday, because that’s when the cabinets are being installed.  We have the floor done to the corner where the table goes, so we opted to stop there for now, so Dennis can work on the electrical outlets tonight that have to be moved/installed before the cabinets go in.  If the cabinet guys can’t finish on Friday, they’ll come back on Monday.  Countertops are being measured and templated on Tuesday.  We’ll probably finish the floor sometime this weekend.  We are getting there!