Those who know me know that I like finding patterns, and I happen to have a knack for it. Most of the time, a pattern is a good thing to recognize. Scientists look for patterns in nature and run experiments to learn if they always hold true. Media/marketing professionals look for patterns in what consumers like and try to deliver more of the same. Doctors tracking an emergent disease look for patterns of symptoms and use them to diagnose new patients; then they do the same thing to recommend effective treatment.

For the flooring that covers this house’s first floor, it was the exact opposite: I wanted to AVOID making a pattern. Our goal is a rustic farmhouse look with floorboards whose placement appears random. Anything repetitive was a no-no: no joints side by side, no large areas without a joint, no sequences of equal staggers (aka “stair steps”), no groups of equal-length boards. At the same time, I had to balance the limited selection of floorboard sizes we had (eight lengths between 2 feet and 6 feet, all in different proportions) and finish each row with as little wasted material as possible.

Ironically, if I laid down the floorboards haphazardly, the result wouldn’t look haphazard at all: I’d inadvertently violate the no-nos and localized patterns would emerge. It turns out the ability to recognize a pattern is key to preventing one. Anybody can do it, and I think anybody can enjoy the process if given enough time. But we like to work fast, and among our crew I had the greatest facility to find an eye-pleasing arrangement.

So I (and near the end, Carson) took charge of laying out the floorboards ahead of Colin and Terry, who fit them tongue-to-groove and stapled them down flush. Our activities left very little downtime – I could always open the next box of floorboard pieces, or measure and cut the finisher board for the current row, or staple down the next layer of red rosin paper which underlays the flooring to prevent squeakiness. Between our working efficiency and the generous width of the boards, we blazed through the job, flooring the entire first floor in two and a half days.

One thing I didn’t do was operate the pneumatic flooring stapler. The stapler is a specialized tool that Terry rented for the installation. It hooks onto the tongue of the floorboard and lodges a long staple into the plywood below, for a connection that’s hidden when complete and very, very hard to remove. We only ever had to remove one board, when we noticed too late that we’d missed some staples in the previous row. Where Terry didn’t have enough space to bop the stapler, he secured the flooring with finish nails, which are exposed but almost invisibly small.

Of all the work we’ve done since we moved to the interior, laying the floor has been my favorite, hands down. It was creative and fast-paced, with only a little bit of annoyance to wedge in the last pieces of each room. And wow, the finished product looks magnificent.