Install Wood Floor Yourself To Save

You can get a beautiful room for less if you learn how to lay hard wood floor in your home. To install a wood floor, you need to understand some basic facts about the nature of wood and of flooring mechanics. There are a lot of ways to learn how to install flooring, and it’s always a good idea to get help from a friend with some prior experience.

Installing hardwood floors can use traditional or floating floor methods. Floating floors have planking with tongues and grooves that fit together and are simply laid over special materials like cork or foam. Traditional methods use some of the same methods but need more expertise and are much more of a challenge for the beginner.

After deciding on new flooring material and getting advice and supplies, you must remove the old flooring and prepare the surface of the under floor that the new wood floor will be installed on top of. The very first step in remodeling is removing old flooring, but if this is new construction, this is of course not needed.

Strip out the old flooring in sections you can manage using a special wide scraper or even a metal spatula to help. You need to remove it completely and then sweep and vacuum very thoroughly. Check for a smooth and level surface. You may need to fill any dips or low areas or even do foundation repairs.

Next, you will lay the under floor, which may come in rolls or be planks that you will lay perpendicular to the eventual finished floor on top. With foam or paper types, use a utility knife to trim to exact fit. Planks may also require custom fitting. The flooring itself should be started in a corner and worked out from there. A spacer goes in first to act as an easement for expansion and contraction of the wood. Use spacers along each wall.

For doorways, you will need to cut a groove to let the new floor planks fit underneath until it is snug against the walls. Measure and fit this very carefully to look as good as it can. The best fixative is an aliphatic glue. This dries fairly quickly, in approximately 60 minutes and reaches full strength in 24 hours. Use a rubber hammer and a shim of a board to protect the surface when you secure each plank. The last one may need a custom cut and a crowbar to wedge into place against the wall. Protect this wall with some scrap plywood.

Allow the glue to dry completely before allowing normal traffic and then enjoy the room! A couple of helpful tips include leaving the wood indoors for a few days to equalize the humidity before putting it down, as well as laying out anything patterned without glue before committing to the final placement.