Bamboozled

We decided on the world's hardest wood flooring to go throughout the upstairs and on the stairs themselves. A stranded bamboo, which means it is basically pulverized to make it even harder than regular bamboo, which is pretty darn hard to start with. It also makes it incredibly heavy, so the task of hauling it all from the street (shown here) into the house and up the stairs really nasty.

So this week I started installing the very hard floor and discovered that very hard wood is very hard to get nails to penetrate. I bought a pneumatic nailer recommended by the flooring

manufacturer, but it was still tough going. I then bought a higher-pressure compressor to drive those suckers in- still slow but as you can see in the second photo I'm making progress. I'm installing it over a recycled felt-like product which greatly reduces noise transmission to the floors below. I'll test out the noise reduction effectiveness by dancing all over the floor in celebration once the last piece is installed, and see if Ann can hear anything downstairs.