On Carpet
I hate cheap carpet. You get it dirty? Any sort of dirt and grime oozes past the carpet itself into the TV static foam mat which itself crumples into dust upon touching like a multi-generational mummy. Carpets don’t just become dirty, they fester and ferment.
The mat is ugly, probably because it has no coherent sense of identity or existence. A smorgasbord of all sorts of foam refuse smooshed together into something good enough to sell you at the cheapest price but better than the nothingness from which it originated.
At least the top-right one is decent.
I would hope we stop building homes like the above because the usage of soft, fuzzy things for emotional comfort such as carpet or fuzzy slippers, which in the bathroom become matted, represent an inefficient preference compared to plastic/rubber slippers or tile floors. If people wanted carpet, perhaps they shouldn’t shortcut the layering of handcrafted Persian rugs on top of already existing wooden floors or tile.
Builders here can’t seem to stop with the fake plastic laminate floors disguised as wood, granite countertops, huge houses, stone facades in front of gas stations because of the love of imitation wealth rather than simplicity. And this comes from the top levels so the lower levels are left with but a terrible simulacrum.
I would much rather have a tiled German bathroom. The above was a very common bathroom design that I saw in multiple different homes, up to the sink and the ledge and the bathroom and bathtub faucets itself.
On Flooring
I had hardwood flooring as a kid. It was glossy and nice, and the winters had heated floors. I couldn’t see myself installing laminate because it seems very fake/unreal, but there are unexpected problems and annoyances with hardwood. It’s also kind of hard to install. I can’t say for sure what type of flooring I will prefer without trying all of them out, but I do prefer some more than others.
One thing I don’t understand is waxing: if the floor gets waxed, how is that any different from covering a layer that doesn’t have that same depth? You would’ve spent extra money on wood that has is imperceptible. Does the hardwood audibly feel different compared to a waxed layer of enginered hardwood?
The steps:
- Measure out an offset from the wall, and chalk line it because supposedly the wall bends in the middle, so you can align your wood against the chalk line instead.
- Face nail the planks closest to the wall. Then tongue nail the upcoming ones.
- Aquabar smells terrible and stains your hands like a marker!!!
- I just used ROBERTS 750 sq. ft. 3 ft. x 250 ft. x .009 in. 30 lb. Waxed Paper Underlayment for Wood Flooring. Cork was too thick.
- Hardwood could have consistent sizes. Some places do this, though perhaps it makes a room feel cheaper vs random stagger? I feel like I waste time trying to pick random pieces to get the length to fit exactly instead of just building the whole thing.
- It seems like a giant wooden sticker, though I suppose you can still sort of tell that it’s a thick layer of wood, and it says something aesthetically to use a thick layer for something when a thin layer would do. And because it has spaces in-between, I could imagine all sorts of bugs and critters making their way through the grooves, which makes me question the design validity of cabinets if critters easily hide in them. Engineered hardwood tends to fit as one giant piece.
- Putting nails in is annoying. Many power tools require a compressor, which can be either “pancake” or “hot dog” style, but represents an additional cost. $150 minimum for the nailing machine, then another $120 for the compressor. I don’t expect to do a lot of this in the future, so maybe I should get an electric brad nailer instead of predrilling and hand-nailing all of it in.
- Hand nailing it surprisingly works albeit it is slow, but I dented a few sides before starting to pad the nail surrounding with a towel.
- At first I didn’t want to use engineered hardwood because it smelled bad, but I drilled into the hardwood and it has that same weird burnt glue smell.
As I lined up the pieces by length, I was reminded of sorting algos. The best is probably selection sort: take a piece and move it to where you think fits. Other algos, despite being time complexity faster, will require moving wood pieces more, making it in reality less efficient.
In the beginning I procrastinated for a long time trying to think of an optimal flooring spacing algorithm. It was better to just start putting planks down and do a greedy algo to avoid plank edges too close together.
The future of flooring
I believe the future of flooring involves flat surfaces that are easy to install, yet good looking.
Reasons:
- Easy to keep clean
- Easy to install quickly
- Easy to integrate with cleaning robot
Although plastic flooring satisfies the above, it is horrendously ugly. Of course, people have to build according to the materials available in their locale/country. Ideally, there is some combination of pre-available planks spaced in such a way that requires as little cutting as possible, dependent upon on the shape of the outer walls.
Thoughts after finishing installation
- Should’ve done wider planks. Would’ve looked better and saved time.
- Door frames should be straight lines to make fitting floor transition pieces fit easily instead of cutting out a jagged shape to fit the details/adornments
- My floor is too light for the wall color
- I barely notice the small end gaps which I took meticulous care not to space too close to each other
- Want to have a baseboard without too many small lines so that it is not difficult to clean dust
- Need different furniture to avoid scraping the floor
- Need to adjust lighting fixture and color to make it more ambient
- Would be nice if each room had a window to air out paint smells
World of Yesterday
It is unknown whether putting in these hardwood floors could be something that influences the minds of others or even makes my own happy. Like how the world of yesterday had people put in hardwood floors and grand pianos and large houses suited for families with five, six, or even seven and eight children, we now have housing that is made of plastic floors and beige carpet and large sizes unfitting of the few residents who reside in them as the majority of human living.
If I one day create a satisfactory house and live in it, perhaps I will feel too strange and out of place due to my continual existence next to material and social poverty.
For high quality construction I feel it does not move the needle much in this day and age. When houses lacked plumbing and construction itself was scarce, much of the world being villages would look upon Chicago or New York with awe. In each day and age there is something at the highest level of human hallucination, imagination, and theory which provides a good source of income. It does not seem to be in physical construction these days, much to the poverty of our cities and communal life.
I feel to myself I have recreated a specific time in American culture. These grand houses with wooden furnishings were a mainstay in my upbringing, and in some ways I feel too bitter to part with them. The logical and reasonable part of me knows it is of a bygone age and time and that my exhumation and bringing of this style back to life may no longer be appropriate. Even if I should reside in such a house or manner, my natural temperament differs from those who made it. It is only reasonable that the form of my living is to be discovered.
What makes me most sad is that I felt like I had never lived in the society I had grown up in. It was there when I was young but by the time I became an adult it was gone. Yet if you compared my experiences with some of my peers: though I had not lived in its core I had enough to witness its existence, something beyond the measure of those recent to the country. In light of the global geopolitical configuration, it is with my deepest gratitude to experience the tail end of the American century. Thank you. You were in most ways good and many of those in this modern age were really not of it, for it is a different system and society all together.
I may look onto the past the way a Boer looks with nostalgia to the continent their ancestors had grown up in, or anyone who remembers their past. It is lost to us, I think. We are not many in number anymore, but should we meet by some chance I hope there is the recognition among us so that the old society may find itself born once again.
