Well, I did it.  As of about two hours ago I laid in the final plank for the flooring in the new office.  The black trim is done, the electrical is done, the ceiling fan and light are installed.  The only things I have left for this phase is to installt the transition piece for the doorway, and to paint and reinstall the two A/C grills on the wall.

Some advice, should you ever decide to install a floating floor yourself: assuming it's a standard closed room with a single doorway, *start* with the run that has the doorway.  It will be substantially easier to make the odd cuts to fit the threshold if it's the first run.  I did it exactly backwards, and that last piece took me about an hour to cut and wedge into place.  Also, as you are laying the planks keep an eye on the wall you started on.  With all of the pounding with the mallet and tapping block, it is easy to knock things off kilter.  I failed to watch for that, and by the time that I noticed my starting corner had drifted away from the wall it was too late to slide things back into place without ripping out half of the floor. No fun.  On the upside, the corner that got left with a large gap also happens to be the corner that will house a built in bookcase that wraps around the corner, so it will be easily concealed.  The gap gets smaller along that wall as you move away from the corner, so the rest should still be able to be covered by trim work.

Other than that, installing a floating floor is surprisingly easy.  The bulk of the floor went very quckly, it was just the last run of planks that had to be ripped for width that took extra time.  All total I started laying down the padding mid-morning, and finished the job late evening.  That's about nine hours of work for a twelve by fourteen room, not including any trim work.  In my case I can't do the baseboards until after I built the bookcases and desks, so the base of the walls will look ragged for the next several months.

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I have been plugging away at the home office, (pictures here for anyone interested) and am making steady progress.  The ceiling took quite a bit of work because of its heavy texturing.  After two thick coats with a deep knap roller, it still had little speckles of white showing through.  I spent my entire lunch break today just walking around with a brush filling in white spots.

With the ceiling more or less done, I moved on to the primer coat on the walls.  I have to do a second primer coat tomorrow, and then go back and do one last touch up on the ceiling.  Then I can tape off the ceiling edges and finally start with the color.  Right now the room looks very depressing;  gray ceiling, mottled gray walls, and a gray bare concrete floor.  It feels like a prison cell.  I expect tomorrow or the next day will be the turning point when the burgandy starts going up.