I'm mostly posting this so the next time we put down hardwood, which I hope will not be for many months but not forever, I will remember my method!
1. Open the box of hardwood boards. Use a tape measure to measure the length of each board (finished side). Use a Sharpie to write the measurement (rounded to the nearest quarter inch) on the back of the board. You can watch Hamilton during this part because you don't need to concentrate too hard. Only do keep in mind that math and music are closely related and if you find, like I did, that you cannot retain the numeral in your brain long enough to get it written on the board in Sharpie, maybe wait till this chorus is over and try again.Only good luck with that because it will still play in your head.
2. Lay the boards out on a big flat surface (my front porch floor served) in order by measurement, longest to shortest. Set the really short ones aside because when you need them, you'll need them, but you won't need them for every course. Might as well not look at them all the time. Also it's time to pause Hamilton because... math.
3. Measure the span each row will have to cover. If your rooms are like ours, you'll have a lot of rows of all the same length, plus some oddball rows that go into a doorway (so they're longer by an inch or two) or cross a floor vent (and thus are shorter in total, with a short end between the wall and the vent and a longer end between the vent and the other wall).
4.Math ! Figure out how many of each length rows you'll need. Divide the other dimension of the room (or space with that length of boards) by the width of your boards. We had 2-3/8 inch wide boards, which is 2.375 in decimal, so I divided the length of the room (113.5 inches) by the board width, and learned that I needed 48 rows of 144-inch length rows for the non-oddball rows.
5. Select your boards for each row. I sat down on the porch floor with a calculator (on my phone) and a tally sheet. I started at the longest boards and started subtracting their length from 144 to get to as close to 0 as I possibly could. It was fun, like a puzzle. Once I knew exactly which boards I needed for each row, I pulled them out of the row and stacked them in stacks at the other side of the porch.
6. I had to stop and reconsider my method, because when Barry took the first few stacks upstairs and started trying to nail them down, he said a lot of them were just a bit too long. See, I was so worried about my rows being too short that I was rounding down when I measured their length, and ending up with more than 144 inches per row. So I knocked down my stacks and started over, this time going for 143-ish inches. So far so good.
P.S. Barry just delivered the crushing news that Pepsico now owns Sprecher's. But they must be allowing them some autonomy because they are still making great pop. (We're in the Upper Midwest. It's pop.)
