I was finally able to start putting down floors this weekend, and I made as much progress as I had hoped. I started in the family room because a lot of our furniture is waiting to be delivered. We didn't want to bring them all in then have to move them all out to do the floors.The project started with tool preparation. The first picture shows two saws that I needed for the project. Not pictured is my circular saw that I bought last week. I borrowed the compound mitre saw (the one of the left) from a coworker. It was easy to setup, simply putting it on two saw horses and plugging it in. That saw is used to cut the boards to the right length (i.e. at the start of a row and/or the end of a row). The saw on the right is a table saw, and is used to cut the boards to the right width. I haven't used it yet because I started with a full width board on the first wall.
You'll see some other tools I needed in the other pictures look for the Bostitch stapler (to nail the boards to the floor), the mallet that accompanies it, a hand sweeper (to make sure there's no debris on or under boards), and tapping blocks (basically scraps used to tap boards snugly together). Other important items not pictured are eye and ear protection (saws and stapler are very loud), a finishing nailer (for nailing boards where the stapler can't reach), an air compressor (to power the stapler and nailer), a tape measure and a carpenter's square (both for measuring), a carpet knife (for cutting tar paper), a sharpie (for marking where to cut boards), a chalk line (for marking the location of joists and the "dead zone"), and a pry bar (for making sure the end boards fit snugly with the last full board in that row).
The day started with a lot of measuring. Jen was able to help with it. A lot of my reading said to make sure to start up against the longest outside wall so everything is parallel, but we have a long hallway that will have boards going the full length. We decided that we want to make sure that was the straightest line. So, we picked a line based on a row of subflooring that runs the length of the hallway. Then, we used Excel to calculate how many boards (width wise) we'd need to complete the room, dividing the width of the room by the width of each board. We were actually more interested in the remainder, because it would tell us how wide the end board would be. We basically wanted to avoid it being a sliver. It turns out that the remainder was something like 0.80, so we were able to start with a full length board. The last measurement we needed to make was to determine where the "dead zone" was. I put two boards end to end, starting at the "end wall" (in the direction where I was progressing each row). A third board would have gone beyond the wall. I then measured 8 inches from the end of the second board and drew two lines perpendicular to the wall those 8 inches apart. This area was the dead zone. If I started a row with a board that fell in that area, it meant that I'd have a board on the end wall less than 8 inches long, which is bad because the tongue would split.After the measuring, we put down the tar paper (the black stuff you see in the pictures), which acts as a moisture barrier. It also has parallel lines on it which helped with the early alignment. Some people say to staple it down, but I didn't bother.
After checking measurements about 5 times (I really wanted it to be parallel) it was time to put down the first board. I put down the board and made sure there was at least a 1/2 inch expansion gap. That's so the wood can expand in humid weather, and not push up against the wall. If it did so, it would cause buckling in the floor. It was now time to fire my first air-powered nail. I have to say, air powered tools are AWESOME. If I could air-power my toothbrush, I would. I fired a few test shots into some scrap pieces to make sure the air pressure was right. That was fun. Then I face nailed the first row of boards. In hindsight, I slightly screwed up here. I knew I had to use the nail gun because the stapler wouldn't fit (the staple holder pushes against the wall). What I didn't realize was that I could have done what's called a blind nail (I think). You basically do that by nailing into the tongue of the board. Instead, I face nailed into the top of the board. Face nailing is unavoidable in some places, but I don't think I needed it there. Anyway, it means we need to get some wood puddy to fill in the holes. After the first row was in, I measured again to make sure it's parallel. It was. So, it was time to go to the second row. I knew I was supposed to stagger the joints, so I cut a board into a smaller piece about a foot long. The stapler was able to fit this time and it was time to give it a test run. It took a few whacks to get the hang of it. I thought you just needed to tap the button with the mallet, but if you do that, not enough air gets in to drive the staple all the way in. Then, you have a fun decision. Pull out the stapler, or drive it in by hand. Both options suck, so I tried to make sure I put a little muscle in each hit. For the whole floor, I think I miss-hit maybe 4 times. I think I have the hang of it now.
I haven't really mentioned the cuts or the sweeping. I've read that dust and debris equals squeaks. So, I was meticulously sweeping. Before I'd pickup a board from the box, I'd first sweep its destination on the floor. Then, I'd take the board out of the box and sweep it to make sure the grooves and tongues were clean. Then, if the board needed to be cut, I'd take the sweeper with me to make sure the sawdust stayed in the cutting area. Then, I'd sweep the destination again just to be sure. It's probably overkill, but I'll be happy when it doesn't squeak.I learned a few cutting tricks during the process. Trick one is to make sure that if your start board needs a groove for the next board to measure with the groove against the wall. That way you end up with a board that's the right length, and that has a groove on it. On the end wall, since you need a tongue to go into the next-to-last board, you measure with the tongue against the wall. I also learned that when you cut a board to use as a start piece, the other end of that board makes a nice end piece at some point. So, don't throw it away.
It's definitely a tedious process, but you start to get into a grove after a while. That is, until you get to an interesting part of the floor. So far, I've had to deal with two types of interesting parts. One was the floor vents. We decided to get flush-mount bamboo registers to go with our floors. I'll get to those in a later post, but I needed to make sure I left room for them to be installed. That meant some interesting shapes of wood for the first 3 rows. The next interesting part was the hearth.
As part of the early measurements, we made sure that we wouldn't have slivers up against the hearth. So, the board at the start of the hearth was basically a full one. I just had to use the table saw (oh yeah, I did use it) to cut the tongue off of the first 18 inches (width of the hearth) of the board. I then slid that under the 5/8 inch undercut that I had the fabricator put in. I'm so glad I did that because I didn't want to have to install any molding around the hearth. I didn't think it would look really good, and I think this way looks awesome. In this picture, I've progressed a bit farther down the hearth and you can see how the boards go under it just a bit.
One other trick I learned (I read about this one) was that you need to pick up boards out of random boxes. Otherwise, you'll start seeing patches of different colors. I thought all of our boards would be the same color, but there are some slight variations. In this picture, you can see the 9 boxes that I had opened. Whenever I needed a new board, I'd take it out of a different box. Here, you can also see how far I progressed for the weekend. I basically got to the right of the boxes by Saturday evening, and did the rest on Sunday. The prep time and a few distractions (shoveling, neighborhood party) took up some of my time on Saturday. Sunday was a bit delayed because I was distracted by Michigan's terrible showing against Iowa, because of church, and because Jen wanted to watch the oscars.
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