INSTALLING HARDWOOD
Al Carrell: Flooring dictates the room's atmosphere. Well, maybe you have a room with worn, stained floors like this room has. It really makes a whole area look depressing. So, we're going to elevate the mood in here with the sophisticated elegance of hardwood floors. You can have a floor just like this and do it yourself in a day or two. Now, it's an engineered product. It looks like it's solid wood, but it's not. And it requires no staining, no sanding, and no nailing. Here's what you'll need for this project: a hand scraper and straightedge, two trowels, latex floorstone leveling compound, a putty knife, urethane adhesive, 3M blue tape and reducers. You're going to need to rent a miter saw and a power nailer if you don't have them on hand. And, you'll need the hardwood. To estimate what your hardwoods would cost, take the room's square footage and add five percent. Now this Bruce hardwood flooring is $3.95 a square foot. Do the math and it turn out that we're spending just over $1,000 for the flooring. Installing it yourself saves you more than $600 in labor and the money you do spend is an investment in quality which will last for years to come. For starters, we're taking out that horrible old carpet. I'm using a hand scraper to get this bare concrete just as smooth as it can be. Then sweep the floor clean. Fill in the recessed areas with leveling compound. Now, we'll start our hardwood floor on this exterior wall here. The outside wall is typically the straightest, but somewhere along the line you're going to run into a spot where the hardwood pieces need to be cut lengthwise to match the remaining space. It's best to plan where that's going to happen.
Sonny Bransom: So you take a look at the room and see where's going to be the least noticeable place.
AC: Open several boxes of the hardwood at once because each one can contain a slightly different color wood.
John Meyers: And you mix the boards all together as you lay out the floor. That way you don't get maybe a box that has a slightly different shade that one and therefore they all blend together.
AC: It's crucial that you use the right tools for you adhesive application.
SB: All the different adhesives have different size trowels they call for you to use. This one actually calls for the quarter inch between them by 3/8 deep sawtooth trowel.
AC: Spread your adhesive down the wall and you're ready to lay the hardwood sections.
SB: And then we're going to come in and use these spacers, like Tico's got in his hand now, to keep it off the wall to maintain our proper expansion. We've allowed a quarter inch all the way and that'll make up hopefully for any variations that's in this wall.
AC: Strange as it may sound, you want the wood pieces to join in an irregular pattern across the room. So choose different lengths of hardwoods to lie next to each other. When you reach the end of the row there's an easy way to make that last piece fit.
SB: The way we've measured how to cut these you know your floor's going with the tongue pointing to you. So, if you put it in there backwards to lay the groove against the wall down here we're actually laying the floor in backwards on the existing floor and then we're marking it on the tongue.
AC: Wah-la! The piece fits! Now, as you work your way across the room, you'll need to measure and cut a few corner pieces.
SB: We'll lay it up here where it's going to go. We'll go ahead and mark this so we'll get our 3/4 of an inch. Mark it where we're going to cut it off to fit there and once we cut this out right there it ought to fit like a champ.
AC: As you near the end of your project you're going to be kneeling and walking on the wood you've already installed. 3M blue tape is going to keep that flooring from slipping while you're on top of it and it leaves no residue when you peel it off. Keep the wood nice and tight as you near the floor wall. We need a little push down this way. Just as you did with the corners, you're going to measure the last few pieces of wood to fit the remaining space. Then, nail down your reducers and shoe mold and you're set. Isn't this a great improvement? And you know, maintenance on this flooring is so easy you wouldn't believe it. As a matter of fact, if you were to damage one of these boards, you could actually replace it. I think the folks that live here are going to love this floor for years to come, don't you?
Episode 61 1997 - 98 Season
| Faux Wall Treatment | Healthy House | Installing Hardwood | House Inspection |