Home Improvement

Hard Wood Floor Installation

Why do a lot of people prefer to have hard wood floors? Besides being the oldest material used for floors, hard wood floors are warm, long lasting, natural, colorful, and inviting. Hard wood floors are always pleasing to the eye. Even if the woods are just roughly hewn together, a hard wood floor offers resilience, flexibility, and insulation against cold.

There are variety of options available for hard wood floors including the classic narrow-strip floor, parquet, and the wide plank floors.

Do you have the needed skills to do hard wood floor installation? Most people are intimidated by the mere thought of personally installing wood floors in their own homes. Is it a very difficult task? The idea of hard wood floor installation may be too intimidating for people who are not "do it yourself" folks. However, is it really difficult? Do you have the drive to do the installation yourself?

What should you consider when planning for a hard wood floor installation? The most important consideration should be a stable sub floor. The following are some of the subfloor materials you can use.

1. Good subfloors can be made of a three-quarter-inch plywood. Alternatively, you can also use a tongue-and-groove common pine. These two commonly used subfloor materials provide the good quality needed for stability.

2. Particleboard can also be used as a subfloor. However, this doesn't provide the same amount of strength that plywood offers.

If you choose to install the more classic type of wood floor, you will need solid strips of wood which are typically 1/2-inch thick. These often come with tongue and groove joints along the edges. These strips of wood are readily available in most home improvement stores in different types of wood including oak, maple, walnut, and cherry.

After providing a good quality subfloor, you are now ready to start the hard wood floor installation.

1. First, you need to remove any existing base molding before starting with the hard wood floor installation. You can do this by using a pry bar. After you are done with the hard wood floor installation, the base molding can be put back in place to conceal the gap around the perimeter of the room.

2. Tack down building paper on your subfloor. This reduces squeaks. Additionally, building paper can also minimize sound transmission to areas below the floor and provide a vapor barrier between your subfloor and the hard wood floor. A building paper is easy to install. You just need to roll it out and staple this every 8 or 10 inches.

3. During hard wood floor installation, you need to determine the width of the starter strip. This is done by calculating how many strips you need to complete the entire floor. You may need to cut the first and last strips to fit the floor. This is because it will be unlikely that you will come up with whole number of strips when the hard wood floor installation is done. It is important that the first and last strips are relatively equal in width. Avoid ending at the opposite side of the room with a very narrow wood strip. You might want to assemble short pieces of wood strips to span the entire room especially if you are working with a smaller area. This will enable you to determine the correct width for both the first and last pieces. Alternatively, especially when working with a large area, use a calculator and divide the room width by width of an individual strip of flooring. You should provide about 1/4 inch of gap for expansion along the walls. These gaps are usually concealed by the base molding after the hard wood floor installation is completed.

Finally, if you are having fun with your project, you will realize that doing a hard wood floor installation is not so difficult as imagined.

Article Published: Saturday 1st December 2007