Installing IKEA flooring: Part two

Saturday we started working on the absolutely must do, cannot procrastinate flooring project that had to be completed before the arrival of the Resident Alien. Yeah, at 36+ weeks of pregnancy, it seemed like a good time to start laying down laminate and turn what used to be the spare bedroom/Darr's office into a room for the kid.

Long ago we made the decision to investigate what was under our carpet and we chose the spare bedroom/Darr's office as our location for the dissection precisely because it was rarely visited by outsiders. (That's code for it could look messy but that would really only bother one person.) What we found? Concrete. Rough, unfinished, gray concrete. Now, had we been active members in the land of motivated home improvement people, we might have done something cool with that like rip up all the flooring and refinish the concrete - maybe add some radiant heating to keep our feetsies warm - stuff of this nature. As it was, we bought some FLOR to go over it and called it good, that is until recently.

The project went something like this:
Day 1: Ends after approximately five hours of frustrating floor-laying labor in which it is determined the measurements are wrong and we need to start over. Fuck.

Day 2: Rip up the flooring that was measured wrong and get pissed off at each other. Day ends in silence as one person heads to the bedroom with a bag full of Kettle chips and the other retires to the living room couch and the sweet darkness that can only be found in a room that has flooring that was installed by someone else.

Day 3: Start over with high hopes for success. Make significant progress and end the day on a high note, although looming closet corners are cause for concern.

Day 4: Lay the rest of the flooring and then return to bedroom entrance, where it all began, to place the final board. It is believed the only way to get said board into the space to complete the project is to rip up all of the flooring we've just installed. Double fuck. Discussion ensues. Use hammer and crafty IKEA tool to pound final board into submission. Sweet success.

Following is a pictorial recap of the installing IKEA flooring project. We still need to add the base trim but I'm pretty happy with the result.