Day Five-fifty-nine: done (well, almost)

Maybe we learned some tricks or got lucky, but today's work went much quicker. Three things made the whole project much easier. We highly recommend them, even if #3 will be tough for most people to replicate.

1. the power miter and table saws made quick, even, and straight cuts
2. applying a touch of Vaseline to the nails eased their path through the hard oak
3. the kindness of an old friend who gave us his virtually new nailer

After one hour we were about half-way done and definitely into the home stretch.

There weren't as many tricky cuts this time. Mostly we could line up the boards, measure the length, and cut. There was one cut with a slightly higher degree of difficulty, but nothing that our trusty jigsaw couldn't handle.

Here's what we accomplished today, with some shims to keep the last row in place.

And here's the final product.

Left to do are:

1. sink the nail heads where we had to topnail
2. fill the topnail holes, possibly with a combination of glue and oak sawdust to make a color match
3. sand the whole floor and then put on a coating of Bona Mega
4. repeat step 3 until we have four coats