Timelines schmimelines! Boxes and Boxes!

Yeah, the dining room isn’t done yet. I’m thinking little Poppyseed did not inherit DIY genes, because my usual furor over projects is pretty absent. It could be the fact I’m in bed around 8 since I have a dancing jumping bean from 3:30 - 5:00 am.

Oh, mom, stop! You're embarrassing me!

But we do have some exciting news, other than my expanding waistline.

We have boxes and boxes of hardwood floors sitting throughout the house.  SCREECH RECORD STOP WHAAA???!!!  Yep wood floor purchase for-the-win!!

This totally just happened and loooong before our predicted timeline. It’s exciting and beautiful and wonderful - and completely spontaneous and not remotely planned for or even budgeted (oops) . Our current shopping list is focused on a babymobile to replace Mike’s two-door car and, you know, cribs n’ diapers n’ things. But this still totally happened and we can’t even “justify” the hardwood as a baby purchase, can we???

I’ll give you the amazing punchline now: We spent less than $500 on almost $3k worth of pre-finished genuine ¾” hardwood floors. That’s enough to do the upstairs hallway, dining room, foyer, and part of the bedroom (more on that later). SQUEEL!!!<-- that was Mike

Did we rob someone, are we secretly pirates? No, no, it was all legit and above board. We just found a heck of a deal.

One of our buddies, a home builder, alerted us to an insane sale going on at one of his go-to shops. Essentially, the store’s warehouse was full of product it couldn’t sell, because the store floor was full of ‘old’ stock that just wasn’t moving. So, they did a store-wide 88-cents/sq. foot sale on all flooring (carpet, tile, laminate, etc.).

Um, yeah it’s worth a good browse. Mike and I scooted down there after work on Thursday with intentions of getting tile for the master bath and, potentially, the guest bath. Maybe they’d have marble, but if not, maybe we could find a nice tile we both could agree on for the guest bathroom or something.

We began by scrounging through the tile.  88 cents is a very compelling reason to purchase things, however, we were pretty “meh” about most of the tile selection.  We did find five good boxes of slate-like porcelain tile that we think will look great in the guest bath. Completely focused on purchasing tile, one of us  wandered over to the wood floor section.  Laminate, laminate, cheap laminate, oooh odd-colored engineered hardwood, has potential at 88 cents a square foot; but nothing grabbed us.  Then we spotted the jackpot aisle...

There were a few pallets of pre-finished (not engineered), full ¾” thickness hardwood flooring, mostly either in a very light, natural finish or that dark espresso stuff that’s been popular. There was even a weird blueish-stained oak. Of course, at 88-cents, you could refinish it however you wanted and still be ahead. If you don’t mind the fumes or living elsewhere for a couple of weeks.

Then, in the back corner, we saw it. (Mike says a magical golden light descended down from the heavens…) A pallet of Brazilian cherry wood (aka jatoba wood). The tones ranged from golden brown to deep red/mahogany and we loved the variation in the grain. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL. Original price for this already discounted store? $5.89/sq ft. Hmm …

“We could do the upstairs hall for really cheap,” Mike said, as I played with legoing the pieces together. Yeah, 88 cents a square foot cheap, INSANE!

I tried to be skeptical, but I didn’t try very hard. The upstairs carpet is cheap, worn out, and even once cleaned, still looks dirty. We didn’t have hallway measurements with us, so we ‘sketched out’  the hallway right there, using pallets and planks and lots of guesswork … and then rounded up, just in case. Total bill, $150 in materials to have a hardwood hallway on the second floor (and new tile in the guest bath).  

Our helper, a lovely gentleman named Hans, waved the pallet truck over, and we started to load our wood and tile.  Outside, it started to rain and snow. Luckily, Mike’s parents have a Subaru Forester and his dad came to our rescue. The loaders were Tetris champs and got everything loaded and the trunk only had a slight gap, secured with twine. Then off we caravaned to the house, and Mike and his dad unloaded while I  tried to hide some of our house mess.

Mike’s dad stayed around while we measured the hallway to make sure we had enough. We did, with just enough left over to spur Mike’s next vision: hardwooding the unused bedroom space to begin our eventual “sitting room” area. Because we’re fancy like that, and I have a crazy husband, and we are at a lost of what to do with this wasted space. Mike created a vision of hardwooding the front ⅓ of the master bedroom so that we could eventually put seating, bookshelves, and a fireplace.  

Laying out some planks in the bedroom.

So Mike called Hans and reserved more boxes for pickup on Saturday. Mike’s Dad left … but we weren’t done yet. Oh no. Hans had discovered that there were 54 boxes or close to 5,000 square feet of these beauties in the warehouse … and he’d offer them at the same 88-cent rate. Then he backpedaled and said he’d have to double-check on that. But he’d fed the beast.

The dark truth of home remodeling is that It. Never. Stops. One thing will lead to two or three other things, and so on and so on … As we laid planks out to admire them, we couldn’t help but think of where we really wanted to hardwood: the dining room and foyer. Downstairs...

Me, being the more practical one, wanted to forgo the partial bedroom flooring and put it towards the dining room and foyer. Then we could buy whatever else was needed to complete that project (and have enough cushion for oopsies and damaged planks). We slept on it, discussed it Friday. The kicker for me was not knowing what our true price would be and feeling caught between balancing the long-term savings of buying now and all of our upcoming expenses (four weddings, two baby showers, our own baby expenses, car, mattress, furnace, etc.).

Friday, after work, Mike calls Hans back. Turns out, he’d give us the additional boxes at 88-cents and throw in the “scrap” (miscellaneous, opened pieces) for free. He was trying to get Mike to buy the whole stock, and Mike saw re-sale dollars dance in his head. We agreed to buying for what we needed, but I just couldn’t say yes to buying 40-some additional boxes of hardwood to then sell on Craigslist at a profit.

Why?

1. Where the heck do we store them? The garage and basement are not hardwood-friendly environments, and I do not want to risk warping them, as that will kill the ability to resell them.
2. Who’s going to help Mike haul all of that? Solid hardwood is heavy.
3. We’ve got some big purchases next month + need to get approved for an auto loan. The banks will eyeball big purchases on the credit card.
4. We’ve got enough on our plate. I don’t want to mess with Craigslist shennanigans.

So, yeah, the no-fun pregnant wife put her foot down. Saturday morning we unfolded the trailer and hauled off to get our goods. It was sunny and dry, a good day for hauling. Poor Mike. The parking lot and loading area is not ideal for trailering. It sits on the end of a long, narrow parking lot with very little room to turn around. But he managed it after some time.

We lucked out and they loaded our trailer for us.  Halfway through loading our little trailer, I noticed that more weight was loaded behind the wheels rather than toward the front. Fellow haulers will recognize this folly. But over half of the boxes were loaded and I hated to ask the workers to re-do it. Once we pulled out onto the road, we realized just how important that wheel-rule is--poor Blueberry was jerky as she slowly drove down the street. We put our flashers on and did 30 in the 45 (people loved us). This car has hauled boats and furniture with no problem, but apparently 16 boxes of hardwood loaded incorrectly does her in.

Mike’s parents returned to help haul in the loot. We’ve now got boxes stored in the master, guest room, nursery, and dining room. Seriously, this stuff is GOLD!  We are so excited about this purchase and we could have never afforded it at regular retail.  Being able to spend $500, to essentially update every major floor in the house is a fantastic feeling.

Background on jatoba wood:

Brazilian cherry wood is not cherry wood, it's just a 'market' name; it's actually jatoba. This wood originates from Central and South Americas and the Caribbean, and it's extremely hard (much harder than oak). This will make things fun on install ... The wood varies from a golden color to deep red and mahogany, and there's a lot of variation in the grain, so it's important to open several boxes at once and take the time to lay them out, so you don't get splotches of monotone and then crazy striping. This variation is important to spotting true jatoba and another wood stained cherry to look like it. The colors will darken over time when exposed to sunlight. This wood is also rot and termite resistant.