Installing A Hardwood Floor, Part I

After buying my house, I've dreamed up a number of projects, most of which I can't afford, such as the window wall or replacing the entire upstairs flooring with hardwoods. As such, I'm trying to take it in small chunks, and one of the first priorities is the office. I'm thinking that bookcases will be more stable on a hard floor than carpet, and it'll be cool to be able to roll around on a hard floor that isn't very practical on carpet. So, carpet got installed everywhere but the two rooms designated "Office" and "Library".

One way to save money is to do it your self. After reading up on it, it looked like installing a pre-finished hardwood floor was actually pretty simple. Fortunately, not being completely out of my mind, I decided to only do the office first, and then decide who gets to do the library (Hint: Not Me!). It's pretty straightforward actually, but it's a LOT of work. A LOT! Though, as I think about it, probably not really any more than any other carpentry project of similar size.

First step: remove the particle board sub-floor. I think it's not strong enough or stable enough or something. So, we go down to the plywood sub-subfloor, though it looks even worse. I almost replaced it with new plywood, but we nailed a test strip, and it seemed to hold pretty well, so we left it. Now, I'm thinking probably should have replaced it with 3/4" (it's only 5/8") but too late now...

Since particleboard is so brittle, the best way to take it up seemed to me to saw along each side of the nail rows, toss the now freed large chunks in the middle, then pry out all the nails. It worked well, but was a lot of work...

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It's very embarassing to saw your power cord in two...

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In the meantime, the 8 boxes of Maple arrived. I picked Maple because it's a lot harder than oak, and I want to be able to roll around in a roller chair without damaging it. Also, it's very pretty. At about $150/box, and with 16 strips/box, that's about $10 for each board... The strips are about 7ft long by 2 1/4" wide, and are made up of random lengths from 6" - 4' glued together and then factory finished.

The wood needs to acclimate to house conditions for about 3 days after arrival to prevent expansion/contraction problems after installation.

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The first 3 rows are hand nailed --- drill, nail most of the way, then punch to avoid marring the surface. The first row has a few top nailed to anchor without jarring out of alignment, then all the rest are nailed through the top corner of the tongue at a 45 degree angle so they're hidden by the next board. This is called "blind nailing". They have tools for doing this; the preferred one is called a "power nailer". Most people would think that this is a power tool, i.e. one in which the tool does the work. No, those are called "pneumatic nailers" although the most common ones seem to be staplers instead of nailers. The "power nailers" are basically a guide for a rack of nails with a big ram that you hit with a rubber mallet to drive the next nail. I think the "power" part means "go out and find the most powerful person you can" because we weren't. The last picture in this set shows how far in you drive the nails with mere mortals at the helm. It also happens to be a good one to show where the nails go... Late addenda: another friend who's installed a number of hardwood floors has his own "power nailer", but it ratchets until the nail is driven all the way in so you don't have to hit it with one mighty and accurate swing. I was warned not to do that with the one I rented, as it would break it.

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We spent so much time trying to get the "power nailer" to work that this is all the farther we got on Day 1. Silly me to think we'd get the entire floor laid in one day!

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Sunday, we did a couple more rows with the "power" nailer, and said, well, I won't repeat that here. We went off to Home Depot and rented a pneumatic stapler and a compressor. It's basically identical to a power nailer, except you don't hit it as hard and a burst of air drives the staple. You still want to give it a good whack, as it helps force the boards tightly together. As such, it's still not easy work, even with the assist, and we only got about half done by the end of Sunday...

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Continued In Part II --- The Next Weekend...