Simple and Effective Hardwood Floor Installation

Nov 24
09:23

2009

Peter West

Peter West

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Hardwood floor installation can be difficult, but with the proper tools and instructions you will find that it can be an inexpensive and effective process.

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Hardwood floor installation takes a lot of work,Simple and Effective Hardwood Floor Installation Articles but you can save yourself a lot of money by learning how to do it yourself. There are even prefinished strips of wood flooring that you can use in order to make the job easier. Whichever method you choose, the entire process of installing hardwood floors is very similar, so this article will be covering just the basics that will apply to most approaches.

You begin to install hardwood floors with only the bare subfloor. For the most part, you can choose whoever type of wood you like for your floor, but red oak is commonly chosen because it looks nice and is relatively inexpensive. It is recommended that you store your flooring in the same climate that it will be installed in, this way you do not have to worry about it expanding or contracting.

The first official step of hardwood floor installation is to lay your planks down perpendicular to the wall joists. It is a good idea to mark this by placing a reference line to indicate the end of all boards. When doing this remember to leave a gap of one half inch around the entire perimeter of the room in case you need to expand later. For the first pieces, it is important that you choose the longest and straightest boards. You will have to drill holes in the face of the planks that cannot be reached using your floor stapler using a 3/8 inch diameter bit. As you will quickly find out, it is much easier to install hardwood floors when you use a stapler.

The next step to installing hardwood floors is the actually laying down of the boards for your new floor. It will make things easier on you if you choose a location for your first board that is parallel to the reference line you made earlier. You can fasten the first board with screws if you prefer, placing the holes directly over the floor joists. On occasion you may need to cut the boards so that they will fit. Be sure to use a perfectly straight piece of flooring to make sure that your pieces are aligned. You can begin using your pneumatic stapler after you have secured the first row.

The final step of hardwood floor installation is to finish laying the boards, beginning with the second row. It is recommended that you keep the end joints 6 inches apart on rows of boards that are right next to each other. There are many different techniques you can use when laying out the boards for your hardwood floor installation which is beyond the scope of this article to cover. So before you begin, this is a topic that you will want to make sure that you have researched and are comfortable with.