I have been so intensely focused on completing my largest bedroom, I let the other two disintegrate into dusty collections of tools, art supplies, and linens that have been displaced from closets. Things are looking pretty dysfunctional around here. So even though I never want to measure another baseboard ever again, I’m slowly plowing my way through the finishing details of my middle bedroom.
When the old closet walls came out of this room, they left two long gaps in the laminate flooring. And even though the previous homeowners left a personal museum’s worth of stuff in the basement, when I ventured down there to check for more laminate, none could be found. (Why?? Why leave me a fishing pole and a box full of arrows and a car maintenance manual from the 70’s, but no extra flooring? You must have had some!) The stuff isn’t marked with a brand name, either.
Since I figured it would be impossible to track down, last weekend I went off to Lowes and bought the cheapest box of laminate that I could find in this color family. I quickly discovered I had bought a different brand when I attempted to insert a new board into one of the gaps and realized that the arrangement of tongues and grooves was slightly different. Out came a chisel, a knife, and more than a few nasty words.
The good news is that in the end, I got them to fit together very well. The bad news…
It’s like playing a game of “What’s wrong with this picture?”
OK, so most of the floor is printed with a pattern of 3″ boards, but in a few spots it switches to 2″. You’d think I’d care, but I just don’t. I suppose it’s because I straight up hate laminate flooring anyway (a picture of wood glued to particle board? Seriously?), and the only reason this floor isn’t getting torn out is cost. And inconvenience. And the generation of more dust. And the probable poor condition of the sub-floor below it. And my mom’s advice to stop ripping my house to pieces.
Let’s file this floor under “good enough” and move on. I’m probably going to stick a bunch of furniture over there, anyway.