Okay, so I’ve been wanting to redo my floors for, like, forever. I finally decided to go for it and picked this “batten dancing birch” wooden flooring. It sounded fancy, and I liked the light color of the birch.

First things first, I cleared out the entire room. This was a pain, honestly. Had to move all the furniture into the hallway and the spare bedroom. It looked like I was moving out!

Next, I prepped the subfloor. My old floor was this gross, ancient carpet, so ripping that up was step one. It was dusty and nasty, and I’m pretty sure I inhaled about a pound of dust bunnies. After that, I checked for any uneven spots on the concrete subfloor. There were a few dips, so I used some self-leveling compound to smooth things out. That stuff is weird – like pouring pancake batter on your floor, but it worked!

Then came the underlayment. It’s the important part. I picked up a roll, I rolled out the underlayment and made it smoothly.

Now for the actual flooring! I started laying the battens. Because, you know, “batten dancing birch” – the battens are those narrow strips of wood that the actual floorboards attach to. I measured and cut the battens to fit along the walls, making sure they were spaced correctly. This took some figuring out, and I definitely messed up a couple of cuts. Thank goodness I bought extra!

Once the battens were down, I secured them to the subfloor. I ended up using a combination of construction adhesive(It smells really bad) and concrete screws. It’s maybe a little overkill, but I wanted to make sure those things weren’t going anywhere.

Finally, it was time for the pretty part – laying the birch floorboards! These clicked together, which was surprisingly satisfying. I started along one wall, working my way across the room. I had to cut some boards to fit around doorways and corners, which was a bit tricky. My jigsaw got a real workout!

The last step was installing the baseboards to cover the gap between the flooring and the walls. cutting and nailing those in place. It’s always a little bit of a puzzle getting the corners just right, but I managed.

And…done! It took me a solid few days of work, and my back is killing me, but I’m super happy with how it turned out. The “dancing birch” looks amazing, and the room feels so much brighter and cleaner. Totally worth the effort (and the sore muscles!).