Oh yeah, forgot to mention - what little "good sound" I had in this room is all completely gone with the removal of the carpet. I'm apparently so tuned to room acoustics, that I can hear the frequency the room reverberates at...and it's making even watching TV sound like I'm listening to it in a long tube.

Once the floor is done, I'm going to slowly bring in some diffusers, and probably install *all* the absorbers I have on the ceiling to try and put it back to at least where I had it with the carpet. Hopefully, with some work and measurements, better.

I figure I'll need at least one plush rug between the couch and speakers, but that will have to wait as they tend to be expensive for anything I remotely like.

I'll also have to make some wood bullnoses for the 6 steps going up from the front door to the livingspace. And transitions between rooms/floors. The Vinyl Planks I'm using are Acacia pattern in sort of a walnut with a hint of red tone - so depending on the light the floors look warm cherry wood or brown walnut. Nobody makes any transitions/bullnoses I like, so I'll just have to craft them myself!  I'll probably make a prototype out of oak, then go replicate in actual Acacia.  :)

Yeah, but I know how good I had it. So it's hard to not just fall back to zero, but be below the room acoustics that I started with. Either way, I've been dabbling in this for more than a decade, so I'll figure something out.  :)

I got the dining room stripped back, cleaned up the floor, pulled hundreds of staples, cleaned the floor, found and pulled more staples, cleaned the floor, pulled any loose nails and replaced with construction screws, added about 150 more screws to lock down squeaks and flatten out subfloor, belt sand high spots, found a few more staples, cleaned the floor, then started laying out vinyl planks.  :P





I really wanted contiguous flooring through the hallway, living room, dining room, and kitchen...but the previous owners apparently added 5/8" layer to the existing flooring for the kitchen, probably to put in tile...so I have this almost 3/4" gap between flooring. I guess I have no choice but to have a transition at each side of the kitchen. I can't afford to raise everything else to this level, so I'll just craft some pretty transitions between floors using actual Acacia wood.




I'm pleased with the results though! I'm looking forward to getting the kitchen done, then bathroom, then entryway and stairs up from the entryway. We'll see how I feel about the flooring after all that, but I'm seriously thinking that if I can afford it, I might just go ahead and do the basement and laundry room in this same flooring. I really do love the look and feel of it. It sucks that they don't have bullnoses and transitions, but hey, it's budget stuff that's not common in the US, so I'll just make what I need.







I'm not sure how I'm going to afford all new trim, but all this fake wood and vintage pine trim needs to be replaced. I was hoping to reuse the old pine, but a lot of it was really thin, dry, and cracked when removing due to the overlarge nails they used to install them. (shrug) I'm still very pleased with this so far.

Oh yeah,  hooked up some old Bose speakers my Dad gave me when he retired and moved to Colorado. He got them for free since he used to sell at a local shop that eventually became Tweeter. They'd have programs where for every 20 pairs you sold you got a free pair or something like that. So we've always had Bose speakers around the house as beater speakers. So I listened to music while working. Off-axis the tubular echo I hear from the couch was gone, and it actually sounded really good for being well used 35 year old Bose pushed by my ZMA. Just don't walk in front of them (back on-axis), it sounded like stock speakers in a car stereo...in a tube. LOL



I'm looking forward to getting all my sound treatment back in, and my little Zen amp and other gear back from Palomino!  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Really ties the room together

A little self-serving, but it makes me happy.

I still haven't found an area rug I like yet. I'm going to be moving more absorption panels into the listening room this week. We'll see how that goes. In the mean time, the ZMA is sounding better every day!

It works, I'll take the comment happily!

 Damned good idea about getting decent area rug. I keep forgetting to put that on my list. Your right about the cost though.

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I've been looking for a while - I picked up this leather shag for $140 off Facebook Marketplace. First one I saw that I liked, at a reasonable price.

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I thought chicks like area rugs! What the hell do I know.
Seriously though, I didn't think the vinyl floor was going to be so cold, so this was a necessity. Hopefully it helps sound wise as well.