Hardwood Floors Installed
April 14th, 2012 | Back to Blog Listing
So continuing on with the wonderful bus conversion, we finally have hardwood floors installed! It wasn't quite as trivial as I thought it would be (even having installed a few floors before). The problems mostly arose from the slight curvature of the 3/4" plywood surface, the occasional screw or bolt that had not been fully countersunk, and the glue. I've learned my lesson, I will NEVER glue a floor surface on ever again. The epoxy is not what I thought, is incredibly difficult to work with, and it gets everywhere - including the skin. But fear not because wood glue is one of the easiest glues to remove from one's skin and this is wood glue, no?

I read the safety sheet AFTER the installation and discovered one is not supposed to work with NA-8500 adhesive without proper gloves. I actually went so far as to call poison control late last night just to ask if there was anything I could do to get the glue off of us. Unfortunately "wait it out" was the official answer (soap, detergent, vegetable oil, mineral oil, and gasoline did not work). So here I sit actually looking a bit like a leper as I type this, my hands burned and peeling from this über adhesive glue. Be forewarned should you decide to wood glue your hardwood installation. On the upside, it's probably pretty damn effective.

Here are a few pics:


Caroline spreading some of the glue with our 1/4" x 1/4" glue trowel. MUCH harder than it looks. For reference, always apply the glue orthogonal to the direction of the wood grain


Mike Crockett was helping us to install the floors and took care of all of my wiring issues as well. There were cheap reading lights all over that I had removed and capped (the wires are good, so may as well keep them handy and accessible)


Almost there!


I finished the front half of the bus myself this afternoon. Relaxing after a lot of back breaking work. The gluing really takes it out of you.


The final wood surface. Unfortunately it got late by the time I finished, so I couldn't grab one in the day light.