Are You Planning to Install a New Hardwood Floor?

There’s great news if you’re in the market for a new hardwood floor that you can install yourself! "Floating hardwood floors" are now available that can be installed right over existing floors using no nails or adhesives. Therefore, the flooring basically "floats" over the sub-flooring. You can save a lot time, effort, and mess. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

At the start of the project, you’ll need to check your sub-flooring to make sure that it’s both level and clean. By adding a specially-formulated joint compound to uneven areas, you’ll be able to level the floor up to where it needs to be. Another decision you will need to make is what direction you want to lay the new hardwood flooring. Taking care of these problems early on will save you a lot of time later.

When using floating flooring, you’ll love the ease of the interlocking tongue-and-grove construction. To permanently adhere the boards to each other, you will need to add a glue that is specially formulated for gluing hardwood flooring. You don’t want to use too much glue, and if excess does come up through the cracks between the boards, wipe it away immediately. You don’t want any glue to dry on the surface of the floor, because it will be difficult for you to remove later.

For novices in hardwood flooring installation, the most difficult, yet important, part of the job is laying the first three rows of boards straight and keeping them fitting tightly together. Unless these three rows are installed correctly, you’re going to have trouble with the entire floor. By using clamps or straps to hold the boards in the first three rows together until the glue dries, you’ll be able to avoid these problems. From there on out it should be fairly easy to complete the rest of the floor.

Due to the fact that hardwood floors expand and contract depending on the season of the year, you must leave a gap between the edges of the floor and the walls. By reading the instructions the manufacturer packaged with the flooring, you’ll be able to determine how large of a gap is recommended. Once you’re done laying and finishing the floor you’ll be able to add baseboards or molding to completely hide the gap.

Your newly-glued flooring will need to be allowed to dry thoroughly as per the instruction manual before you’ll be ready to finish the floor. Once it’s dry you can sand it well with an electric sander and fine grit sandpaper until it’s as smooth as glass. Then you’ll be ready to apply stain, if you choose to stain your floor, and a heavy urethane coating to protect it. Although you can certainly do all of these things yourself, you may decide that you’d prefer to have a professional do the job for you to ensure the best possible finish.

Do you want to find out more about installing laminate floors? Refinishing Hardwood also has information on refinishing hardwood floors and how to clean laminate flooring.