Man am I sore! Wood Floor Install...

[SCWDP911]

holy moly! I hurt in places I did not know existed. Started laying some new mahogany floors today. Never done this before. Prep was most of the time today, Only laid about 100sq. ft. of wood. Honestly, I was trying it with the idea I would probably need to call the professional in (who is doing another job for us), btu low and behold, it is actually going pretty well and the floor is actually straight... so far anyway... will post pics later.

[1990C4S]

Try stripping a roof. Then shingling it.

You using a pneumatic nailer?

[LWJ]

Been there! I have laid two floors. You will hurt all over for the first couple of days then it is no big deal. I have been laying a concrete paver patio (virtually all F'ing Summer) and it is a similar level of pain.

What you need to know is that you CAN do this. It may be the most satisfying job I have done on a house. And if the "Pro" isn't a full time wood floor person, you will end up doing a better job most times. It isn't rocket science. Take your time. You will get a buzz of self satisfaction everytime you have someone come over and gush about how great your floor looks.

Really.
Good luck.
Larry

[Scuba Steve]

I'm right there with you! Are you gluing or floating?

Right now I'm in the middle of laying down 600sqft of engineered walnut. It's a glue-down installation on a concrete slab. So far the removals are done and today I'm going to level the low spots that are at about 1/8 inch low. Nights are busy between Monday thru Thursday so I'll spend the meantime cutting door casing and jambs, and undercut the bottom 9/16 off the mantle so the installation will look more professional.

The only part that makes me nervous is getting the first couple of rows completely straight. Altogether it's about a 70ft run through the entry way, dining room, hallway and family room lengthwise.

[Evans, Marv]

I recently entertained the thought of installing about 1.7K s.f. of 1 1/2 in. x 3/4 in. oak flooring in the house I'm finishing up. That was because of the outrageous estimates I was given by installers. I finally found a good company to install it for $2/s.f. to nail it down & $2.75/s.f. to sand, seal, stain, & finish it. I'm plenty happy I did. It would have taken me months to do it myself. They did an outstanding job too.

[dad911]

Originally Posted by Scuba Steve

.....The only part that makes me nervous is getting the first couple of rows completely straight. Altogether it's about a 70ft run through the entry way, dining room, hallway and family room lengthwise.

Is it Tongue and Groove? If so, slickest 'trick' I have seen was to rip a 'tongue' out of hardwood, and insert/glue it in the 'groove' side so you can start in the middle of the room, and work both ways. Then you can snap the longest line and start there.

Or lay it on an angle. More cuts, but if the room is out of square, you won't notice.

[speedracing944]

I did 8 inch wide, 1 inch thick solid oak plank with boards ranging from 6 feet to 18 feet long. There are over 780 screws and pegs holding the floor down. Each peg was glued into place and cut flush. The varnish is 5 coats of tung oil varnished.

The hard part was the flooring was going over a concrete slab. What I did was lay 3 layers of vapor barrier and on top was 3/4" plywood. The plywood was fastened to the concrete using concrete anchors and stainless steel bolts and washers. An additional vapor barrier was placed over the plywood and the 1" thick by 8" wide oak plank was laid over top fastened down by countersunk torx deck screws placed every 16 inches lengthwise and 3 screws widthwise. The countersunk holes were plugged with oak dowel which was cut flush. The entire floor was sanded using a large vibrating pad sander and given 5 coats of tung oil varnish.

I love my floor and is much better than the off the shelf flooring you can get at flooring shops. The real turnoff of the flooring shop flooring is the pieces ranged in length from 1 foot to 6 feet. I though this was unacceptable.

Speedy

[speedracing944]

what we started with.




With the vapor barrier, plywood and a couple oak boards laid down.



The finished floor.





What I forgot to say earlier is to stick with it. You live love the results and the satisfaction knowing you did it yourself.

Speedy

[Scuba Steve]

Originally Posted by dad911

Is it Tongue and Groove? If so, slickest 'trick' I have seen was to rip a 'tongue' out of hardwood, and insert/glue it in the 'groove' side so you can start in the middle of the room, and work both ways. Then you can snap the longest line and start there.

Or lay it on an angle. More cuts, but if the room is out of square, you won't notice.

It's Kahrs - it has this wood lock cut to it that's not tongue and groove. The stuff sort of snaps together really tight. If it turns out being something that can come apart without too much trouble I'll probably snap a bunch of pieces together along the longest run (down the hallway and through the two rooms). Then take a bunch of really careful measurements both in the hall and along the walls at both ends to get a nice starting point. Then snap a chalk line that I can use to measure off of and get to it.

But I'm still on the leveling the concrete step. Gotta get it level within 1/8 per 8 feet. Fun times...

[Shuie]

I just removed about 800 ft^2 of glue down laminate. Worst job ever. I ended up having to refloat the entire area because the glue down pulled everything off of the slab with it. Initially, I got a quote from a flooring guy, and then figured I could do it better for less money myself. I should have just paid the man to take care of it.

[john70t]

A warm room and quick pass with a torch will help soften glue up. Ventilation a must.

[gt350mike]

About a year ago we laid a wood floor down the HARD way. We pulled 1x10x10 pine from our old bard, cut it, planed it, tongue/grooved it, then laid it. When we started, we were planning on covering the dinning room and the living room, but I ran out of wood and had to lay some pine that didn't match the grain of the older wood.
The floor turned out great and I always refer to it as the $1 million floor because it would take that much money to do it again!

[azasadny]

Several years ago, we put an addition on the house and I bought about 1100sq ft of Oak floor in strips and then installed it using the old "wack-a-mole" floor nailer (PortiNailer). After a few weekends, it was done and we had it professionally finished and I'll never do it again!! Looks great, though!

[SCWDP911]

Got one room done (master bedroom). What do you know, it actually met up with the existing matching mahogany flooring in the hallway brilliantly (read that as it was actually straight!!!). That is true satisfaction, as in this room, I had to work from the opposite wall over due to the side the tongue was located on (I will have to remember the glue on extra tongue trick someone mentioned above for the next time I d... wait, did I just say that?)... The next two rooms hopefully will be just as smooth as I simply need to start from the pieces in the hallway and continue on.

The wow factor is defintely there already. Using BR-111 Santos Mahogany (solid). Beautiful wood. Getting great comments so far. The worst one came from my wife the first night. She couldn't believe it had taken so long to complete an area of 3' x20' (room is 20'x 25'). I calmly said in my best Yoda, "leave... now... you should...". After I calmed down, I explained to her I was doing this by myself and each piece while in varying lengths, is only 3" wide...

Pneumatic nailer is a must for this solid wood and a life saver... Hoping I will feel better as someone eluded to earlier in the thread, as I need to start the other two rooms tonight and hopefully finish by end of this weekend. Good news though: those two rooms are only 13' x 15'...