Skid Marks

My husband and I decided we would install the laminate hardwood floor in our new house. Since we are semi pros, having installed this type of floor in a previous house before, we thought we would try our hand at it again. We started in one of the upstairs bedrooms and had worked all night, well into the next morning.

But I wanted to share with you one of the conversations that we had while installing the floor. We had to talk in code. Because the directions said so. No, not really just because it was fun and it passed the time. The floor planks came about 8 to a box and each box contained up to five different patterns. The patterns were classified to us by what types of markings were on a certain plank. The planks were then categorized by pattern so we could have a rotating pattern and not the same board throughout the floor. You know we were trying to give the floor a little life. Enter the patterns:

This should be self explanatory. I thought they looked like bullet holes.

This one is a little harder to see. But this board had this distinctive mark on it. You know the eye that's on the Lord of the Rings movies. Well I didn't know the name of it until I googled it for the blog. So yes this board was called the "Eye thingy on the Lord of the Rings."

This was a nice board. There wasn't many of these. It had no harsh lines on it just a smooth looking board. Hence the name "Clean and Smooth."

This one is a little hard to see as well but at the very top of this board were little stripes that reminded me of a tiger. You know there has to be one reference of a tiger in our floors considering the mascot of my husband's basketball team and all.

This little beauty is what all the giggles were about. Yes it says skid marks but not the kind you find in your underwear. But the kind found when you spin out on the highway. Yes, I did giggle every time I thought about or said this name but I honestly named it for the tire marks people leave on roads, honestly! I would just like to say that apparently the company that made these boards didn't realize that for every one of the other patterns mentioned above there were at least seven thousand skid mark boards. So by the time we got to the downstairs bedroom we had nothing left but skid mark boards. So our bedroom floor is covered by skid marks.

Just a side note, I did name all of these boards and my husband liked them so much he went along with the names and humored me because I was delirious and silly. 

Onto the conversation. Oh to be a fly on the wall at our house sometimes. We had us a system going. I would hand my husband a board and he would knock it into place while I stood on top of the adjoining board so they would lock together. It was my responsibility to keep up with the pattern and just hand the man a board. So we got to the end of one of the rows and for some reason I wasn't paying attention and handed Steven the wrong pattern. (Who knew he was keeping up with it.) And I quote my dearest husband, "That's the wrong board I need another one, hand me a skid mark." Me, "no a skid mark doesn't go there it's a tiger stripe." Steven, "I've already used a tiger stripe hand me a skid mark!" Me, "Oh, ok, yeah, you're right, it's definitely a skid mark." Just imagine the seriousness of this conversation. We were all business. We didn't realize what we had said until after he knocked the board into place. Of course I was all giggles the rest of the weekend.