Houston, We Have Liftoff

[wordswoman]

Woo hoo, I have safely operated power tools!! I am inordinately proud of myself considering that I haven't actually laid a single Pergo plank in place yet.

However, I successfully changed the blade on the table saw and accomplished three kinds of practice cuts on my scrap wood: rip cut (lengthwise), crosscut, and a 45" mitered angle cut. And I still

Comments

[green_knight]

Hurray for powertools - and double hurray for sense of _not_ pushing the envelope.

[dmbaird]

Definitely a good plan to wait until you're fresh. They pieces do snap together pretty quickly if you have a plan - Eric and I laid the floor of my studio in one afternoon. We learned a couple of tricks:

1. Map out how you want to pieces to lie first, (in our case, we staggered the short pieces, so they ended up on opposite sides of every-other line of planks.) Then cut your shortie pieces (making sure they go in the right direction to have the rough edges against the wall.)

2. Don't try to fit pieces one-by one: do them in a line. Fit all the pieces for one line end-to-end first, then place that entire line into the previous one and get it as close to flat as you can. Then pound it into place using a mallet (starting on one end) gently - it doesn't take as much force as you'd think.

[wordswoman]

What great tips, thank you!!

[maggiedr]

I am watching with interest as I've been longing to do this in our kitchen. My husband is convince that it isn't worth undertaking ourselves, even to save $$, and he is very experienced with tools.

[wordswoman]

I am not at all experienced with tools, so if I can do this--which I grant you has yet to be conclusively proven!--then anybody can.