Lay Your Own Extraordinary Hardwood Floor (page 2 of 3)

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Steps 1-10

Click image to enlarge.
1. Rip up particle board under-layment to expose the solid plywood subfloor. Use a cat’s paw to remove most of the nails, and lift or pry up the sheets with a pry bar.

2. Grind down high ridges of the plywood subfloor with a hardwood floor edge sander ($25 per day to rent) with 50-grit sandpaper. If you have only a few ridges, you can use a belt sander or high-speed disc sander with coarse-grade paper.

3. Fix those squeaks. Screw down loose flooring with 2-1/2 in. drywall screws to eliminate squeaks. Angle screws at butt joints to make sure screws don’t miss the floor joists.

Click image to enlarge.
4. Install additional plywood underlayment if needed. Alternate 1/2-in. underlayment end joints at least two floor joists away from the end joints of the subfloor and from each other as well. Mark floor joist locations on the walls so you can find them after the underlayment is in. Tack the sheets with 8d nails and use the floor joist marks to snap chalk lines for nailing. Nail every 6 in. with 2-3/8 in. ring shank nails.

5. Sweep or vacuum the floor clean. Tack down rosin paper (available at any home center or flooring supplier) with a stapler. Lap the joints 6 in. and tape the seams with 2-1/2 in. masking tape.

Lay Out The Border

6. Stretch mason lines about 1 in. above the underlayment to mark the outside edge of the first border. Tie the lines to nails positioned outside the border. To get exact spacing for the border corners, lay them out using mock-ups of short pieces of real material. Keep the borders a consistent distance from inside and outside corners. (Sometimes you’ll have to compromise.) Draw pencil lines on the paper as needed to show precise positions and keep everything perfectly square.

Click image to enlarge.
7. Screw a 1x4 backer board to the floor with 2-1/2 in. Drywall screws spaced every 12 in. on the outside of the first border, sighting down the tops of the strings to keep board edges perfectly straight. Space the two side 1x4 backers the correct distance from the walls and check squareness using the 6-8-10 technique before screwing them to the floor.

Install The Border

8. Chisel off chunks tongues to get tight unjoined ends when grooves are missing from adjoining pieces.

9. Install the outside border feature strip around the room by face-nailing and blind-nailing (see Photo 10) to the underlayment. Orient the first border with the tongues facing the field (see Photo 12). Orient the left side border (the French door side) with the grooves facing the field, and the opposite border with the tongues facing the field. The border at the far end of the room will have the grooves facing the field.

10. Blind-nail where necessary by predrilling 1/16-in. holes at a 45-degree angle through the inside corner of the top of a tongue (the most common place) or through the bottom inside corner of a groove. Then hand-nail with 2-in. finish nails, setting the heads with a nail set so that the nailhead is flush with the wood.