Engineered Wood Flooring Can Be Your Best Investment

There are lots of people all around the world that would love to have engineered flooring in their home, but are too intimidated by it to make the dream a reality. This is a shame because installing this type of floor covering is very easy to do on your own and relatively inexpensive to pay a professional to do the nailing or floating. Another great thing about engineered wood flooring is that you can find it in a multitude of species. You can go with the standard oak or go all out with a beautiful maple. There is nothing wrong with a professional installing your engineered flooring, however if you are pretty handy around the house we encourage you to at least take a look at what is involved and give it a try.There are not really that many steps in putting in engineered oak flooring and there are not many tools to get either. We will cover some of the main steps that you will have to do, but this will not eliminate the need to read and follow all of the instructions that the manufacturers of the materials and tools provide. The sub-floor is the first thing that you will have to install. It sounds like a lot more than it really is. This means nothing more than putting down a layer of plywood so that you have something for the finished product to be adhered to. The next major step is one that many people are scared of and that is to trim the door casings. Many people are terrified to take a saw to a part of their home that they normally leave alone. This is necessary so that you can slide the flooring under the casing and have a nice clean finish. The third step is to put down builder’s felt. This is done for a number of reasons, but the main one is to separate the flooring from the sub-floor. If the two wood surfaces are touching you will hear squeaking and creaking when you walk on it, which is not very enjoyable or desirable.The last main step is to get your first row started. The first row of engineered flooring is the most important one because every subsequent row is laid based on it. If the first row is not straight or square then you will never have any of the rows square. Having the first row out of square by only a fraction of an inch may not seem like a lot, but it is. That fraction of an inch each row will add up to a huge amount by the fiftieth one. Above all else, when you are installing your flooring think about safety first. Materials and tools can be replaced but a life cannot so be as careful as you can. When the work gets hard just sit back and think about how beautiful the finished product will be. This will keep your spirits high and the project moving.