Moving on up! Insulation and floorboards

Now we start adding some dimension to the building. Now that we have our conduit placed and approved by the county, we can continue moving out of the ground and start adding our insulation.

We begin in the center and add insulation to the middle third section and start nailing in the thick 2 x 6 tongue-and-groove boards.

The boards are beautiful, but one thing we found early in the process was that due to having to remove them from the bundle to get at other boards needed for the base framing, fully half of the boards dried crookedly before we could use them - some extremely so.

We live in a very arid environment, so I know that part of the problem was more drying than most places would experience. But if I had it to do over again, I would not purchase this upgrade and would stick with the plywood floor and purchase commercial hardwood flooring locally.

We had to do some serious manhandling to get them within a range that we could work with. We have a lot of wood putty work ahead of us. It was exhausting work.

Again, I do NOT recommend this flooring for arid environments UNLESS you can install it immediately after unstrapping the bundle so that it can finish drying in place to allow it to dry straight. In fact, I would recommend this method for everyone.

Insulation and first floor board

Tapping additional boards into place with cut piece of floorboard

We used straps to hold the boards together - very useful for fitting crooked pieces together snugly!

Added another strap for more tightening/straightening ability

Saving the boards with bark on them for the edges. Was not thrilled with these as they will make my office floor hard to clean.

Working with the worst dregs now; getting harder to straighten

Boards with bark - more rustic that I wanted

Getting harder as we use the most crooked boards towards the end. Notice Brad is using a pry bar as leverage and screwing the top of the board since nails inside the groove won't hold. Fortunately we have this positioned on the patio.

Since we had to use screws on some boards, we decided to go ahead and put them across the entire patio to make it look intentional. Brad is countersinking them here.

Floor finished!