March 27, 2006 - Monday - This week sees the installation of the bamboo floor in all parts of the home that do not have tile.  Mark Brown again gave Jeffrey a hand today which is much appreciated!  As mentioned before, we are using Yanchi bamboo flooring.  A wonderful, top of the line product.  We wish however that we could source bamboo flooring from another country besides China.  It is very tough to find.  We love the Chinese people, but the Chinese government is troubling in many ways.  We are using Yanchi's engineered flooring product which results in a fully "floating" floor covering.  Since we have radiant floor heating and a slab on grade concrete floor, we can not nail the flooring down.  Likewise we would not want to glue it down for fear of the glue breaking down or causing a smell when heated by the floor.  The answer is to simply have the flooring sit or "float" on the concrete slab.  The term floating is used since the flooring is not held down with any glue or fasteners.  Typically floating floor pieces "click" together with a couple of gentle taps from a rubber mallet.  One of the results is the flooring can be installed incredibly fast.  Mark and Jeffrey did the master bedroom, entry, hall, kitchen, and most the living room in a single day!  This shot shows the progress by the end of the day in the living room.  In the bottom left corner of this picture you can also see some blue material under the flooring below the bar.  This is the double layered membrane that is required under the flooring.  One layer is plastic sheeting to act as a vapor barrier, while the other layer is very thin cellulose foam to give just a bit of cushion.  Bamboo materials can definitely be considered green building materials since bamboo grows so fast.

    March 27, 2006 - Monday - Here is a shot of the master bedroom with the flooring installed.  Notice that we do not install any wall to wall carpeting in our homes.  Carpeting can many times contributes to unhealthy indoor air quality and we feel using carpets of any kind should be a choice that the home owner makes, not the builder.  More of our "build green" philosophy.

    March 27, 2006 - Monday - A nice picture taken from the living room looking down the hallway toward the guest bath.  We chose the "horizontal" type of bamboo flooring with "natural" finish.  The horizontal version really makes the bamboo look stand out.  Check out this link to see the difference between the vertical and horizontal styles:  Yanchi styles.

    March 28, 2006 - Tuesday - With help from Mark Brown yesterday, Jeffrey has no problem going solo today.  This picture is taken from the kitchen looking across the hall into the northeast bedroom.  Not only does the bamboo flooring have a 25 year warranty, but if needed, it can be sanded down and refinished.  That time, if it ever comes, is many years away however.

    March 28, 2006 - Tuesday - As mentioned, this flooring goes down very fast.  Here we see the kitchen floor installation is complete.  It sure adds a whole different look to the home!

    March 28, 2006 - Tuesday - In this shot toward the area built for the computer desk, you can see that we purposely leave a gap between the walls and the flooring to accommodate possible expansion of the flooring when it gets warm.  Also you can see a piece of flooring used as a spacer between the flooring and the wall.  Not only does this give us a nice gap as mentioned above, it also keep the flooring from moving too close to the wall as we install subsequent pieces and tap them into place.

    March 28, 2006 - Tuesday - This is what Jeffrey calls the "golden spike" picture.  Here we borrow a term which refers to the last spike driven when two railroad building teams coming from opposite directions finally meet each other and complete the railroad.  This term is appropriate here because this is where the kitchen floor and the living room floor finally come together and become one.  This happens under the archway between the kitchen and dining room.  Thanks to the tight manufacturing tolerances of our flooring, the two come together just great! 

    March 31, 2006 - Friday - It took only three days to install the floor, and two of these Jeffrey was solo!  Here we see a nice shot from the living room into the dining area.  Real high class, don't you think?!?

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