On Friday afternoon the contractor arrived at 3PM and had made a bunch more of the tiny flooring jacks. We spent a couple hours trying to close up the gaps.
The gap by the floor outlet closed up quickly and we consider that one done. But the gap at the corner of the kitchen counter proved intractable. We took up the transition strip to make sure it wasn’t binding and put it back. We took off the baseboard on the counter to check same and put it back.
We got an unpleasant surprise. We’d used brass screws on all the transition strips and the 3 holding the one to the bedroom had all snapped off. They are 1.75” long usually. Fortunately I have lots of the screws leftover.
But removing the strip and drilling out the ends of the screws did allow for more movement in the flooring as he tightened the jacks. We got about ½” out of the flooring, but still have just over ¼” to go, so the blue tape is still down. The transition strip for the bedroom is currently held in place with double side tape, to allow the boards to move.
I sure wish I knew why that last gap won’t close. He figures it’s because:
- Flooring laid in these sections at different times and from different, or the same, boxes
- The span just isn’t square enough
- Flooring just wasn’t laid squarely.
He had about 45 minutes left so he went down and started on that second section on the east wall in the root cellar.
He will be back on Monday, probably mess with the floor again and hopefully put more time in on the root cellar.