Installing Wood Floors
Few things can bring out the true beauty of your home like wood floors. If you have never lived in a home with wood floors, then you are really missing out. In fact, you don’t really know what you are missing. They are so far superior to anything that carpet has to offer that it is not really even a contest. If you are going to make it happen, then you have a couple of options. You can either pay lots and lots of money to have a professional do it for you or you can install the wood floors on your own. Ultimately this is your choice. If you want to do it for yourself, then here is a guide on installing wood floors.
The first step to removing wood floors is to strip clean the original floor as much as you possibly can. You need to start completely new with this process and you can’t do that unless you strip your wood floors to the bare bones. The most important part of this process is not only getting rid of the old floors, but getting rid of the stuff that goes along with that old floor. Specifically, any nails, staples, or glue that might have been with the old floor should be taken up and everything should be cleaned and smoothed down.
The first step that you must take is to cut your felt underlayment in preparation for the stapling process. After you do the cutting, you will be ready to staple your underlayment to the sub-floor. You will need to do this with as few staples as you can because those can make it difficult for your to get the job done later on if there are too many sticking out.
The flooring with have to be nailed along the floor joists. How do you find these joists? It is not an exact process, so it requires you to use a little bit of common sense. You need to go along with something (maybe a hammer) and knock along the floor until you hear a solid sound. This will show you where the floor must be nailed down at and it will help you get a plan in place for the overall installation of the floor.
You must start with installing wood floors by placing your longest piece of wood flooring along the wall that is perpendicular to your joist. This is an important first step. From there, you need to start filling in the floor with the appropriate planks and nailing them down when necessary.
Once you have completely done this throughout the whole room, you will want to leave a little bit of room for movement. This slight bit of room might be as small as ¼ of an inch. This is important because you will need that room to make sure that your floor fits correctly. That will enable you to have the perfectly fitting floor that looks good and adds something meaningful to your home.