Clickity Clickity

“What is that sound?” I asked my real estate agent, Margaret, as we did the final walk-through after closing on my newly purchased home.

With all the furniture and area rugs removed, the house was completely empty of the previous owner’s possessions. Everything was as expected—no new holes in the walls, no unexpected stains on the carpet—but as we walked across the wood floors, there was a definite clicking sound.

Margaret and I walked into the living room area, the clickity clickity sound seemed to get louder with each step. I had a horrible notion that I had just made a terrible mistake in not noticing this before.

But, I had noticed it. When all the furniture and rugs were there, the clicks were less noticeable, for sure, but they had definitely been audible.

Insecurity flooded my brain where the voices of authority figures of all ilk told me that I had been very stupid, had miscalculated, had failed. But Margaret assured me that it wasn’t that bad and reminded me that once my own furnishings and area rugs were in place, I would probably not notice it as much. In any case, the house was already purchased, and the deal was done.

Over the next few weeks, I did what I called the Mini move. After work each day, I loaded the back of my Mini Cooper with boxes and laundry baskets full of stuff from my apartment and drove it over to the house. Little by little, I placed items in the kitchen, in the bedroom, and in the bathrooms and closets. Each time I came into the house and walked across the wood floors, the clickity clickity sound echoed in my wake. By the end of the second week, my nerves were raw from the continued berating from voices past that constantly threatened my resolve and confidence. I had to do something about it.

I called Louise.

Louise owns a flooring business. She and I had worked together on a couple projects at my previous home, and I trusted her to give me good advice. She came over to my new house just one week before the furniture was scheduled to arrive. As we walked around, the clickity clickity sounds reverberated around us, and Louise just kept shaking her head. “This is the worst floor installation I’ve ever come across in my entire decades-long time in the business.” The voices in my head started yelling at me. Louise placed her hand on my arm and explained that whoever had installed the floors had failed to do one of two standard things. On a slab, which my house was built upon, she would have recommended gluing the boards down, but even if the installer had preferred to “float” the floors, a pad should have been laid down first to prevent the clicking. What we were hearing was the flexing of the tongue-in-groove at those points where the concrete foundation was not precisely level. This made perfect sense to me, but did nothing to quell the feeling that I had made a bad decision.

As I often told my children, there’s no mistake (except possibly death or dismemberment) that can’t be fixed with money. Painful though it was to spend it, I contracted with Louise to rip up the three-year-old floors, and properly install new ones. She was able to do the whole job before the furniture arrived. I was (and am) extremely happy that I did it. The old floors came up in whole pieces, which Louise helped me donate to Habitat for Humanity.

I was worried about adding so soon to the expense of the house, but with values increasing so rapidly in Nashville, I needn’t have. When I walk across the wood floors now, the voices in my head are saying, “Good decision.”

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2018