Hard (Wood Flooring) Lessons Learned (Part 1)

Hardwood Flooring – DIY Style

During the three months we were waiting to close on the purchase of our home (you can catch-up on that story here), and we had far too much time to make decisions on the renovation projects, we came to the decision on what to do with the floors in our not-so-old Victorian home. And for the most part, it was a choice to put-down hardwood flooring throughout the house. Mind you this was only going to happen if we did the installation ourselves because, well, it was simply a cost factor! With all of the other projects we needed to complete, budget was always a consideration and the flooring was one of the biggest considerations of them all.

Where to Begin

We started with the upstairs areas because we were really eager to create some livable space. And getting our master bedroom completed so that we would have someplace to retreat to and save some of our (okay, my) sanity in the upcoming months, was a priority. Keep in mind that we had purchased the flooring the day after we closed on the house so that it would have plenty of time to acclimate. And boy did it have time! We had moved on to several other projects in the mean time, which ended up delaying our really quick start to getting the flooring installed!

We had already pulled up the carpet in our bedroom, and painted the various stains on the subfloor with Kilz to block out the odor (yep, there was that!) The walls had all been painted, the new pocket door to the master bath had been installed and flooring was all that we still needed. With the purchase of a nail gun and thousands and thousands of nails, we were ready!

How Difficult Could it Be?

Now there are several tricks and tips to laying hardwoods. You first put down some sort of underlayment onto the subfloor. There are lots of options out there but we didn’t do anything too extensive; it’s pretty much a preference thing that will determine the underlayment you pick. Next you have to be sure that you nail-down the first line of boards with enough allowance around the edges to accommodate expanding of the wood. If you install the flooring too close to the walls, you may have a problem with the wood buckling when moisture in the air causes the wood to expand. The wood will continue to expand and contract over time, which is what acclimating helps with by reducing the extremity by which the wood expands and contracts. However, making sure you leave an appropriate gap is just as important a step in the installation as acclimation; No Buckling Floors!

It’s All About the Sorting

And you can’t just randomly start grabbing pieces of wood and start nailing them down. I mean I guess you could but we felt we had some work to do first on picking the pieces by size and determining the order we wanted them to go down. We wanted to be sure that the seams were random and spaced out so that we wouldn’t end up with the ends of boards lining up together in rows right next to each other. They needed to be staggered in an aesthetically pleasing way! And so that my slight OCD would not be aggravated! Because we purchased a lower grade of wood (to get a nice rustic/aged look and save some moolah too!), we needed to go through and sort the wood by both condition and size. Better condition would go in more visible locations while the pieces with more “character” would be better suited for closets and less conspicuous places.

Who’s Doing What?

And this is how we divvied up our roles for the installation: I was in charge of sorting and determining what boards would go down where/when and Warren was in charge of fitting and nailing the boards. I would place several rows of flooring down and Warren would go along and nail them down behind me. Oh and I was also in charge of making sure the air compressor line for the nailer stayed out of Warren’s way!

And that is how we proceeded. We first finished laying our bedroom and closet and then moved out into the upstairs foyer. Before we could begin that area though, we did have to pull up the old hardwoods which we did before we painted the walls.

and that was loads of fun!

We’ve Got This!

We made our way throughout the upstairs areas (foyer, guest bedroom, and Warren’s office)

and by the time we were finished upstairs, we knew we were ready to take-on the downstairs areas, no problem! It did take some getting used to the process and it was hard work for both of us but all in all, we didn’t run into any major issues. The knees took the biggest brunt of the damage. Even with knee pads, we suffered and Warren will claim that the knee pads themselves were more painful than not using them at all. I respectfully disagree.

Moving Right Along

As we moved from space to space, I would relocate my sorted pile of flooring so that I could easily work on sorting new wood and pulling from the already sorted wood to lay down each row in front of Warren. This also allowed us to continually evaluate how we were doing with our estimate of how much flooring each room needed. We actually did pretty good on our estimates but we would need to return to the store for more flooring and for a whole other reason, which I will share in a future post. In the end, we had developed quite the system for installing the flooring and we felt good about what we had accomplished so far!

We had several spaces now covered in hardwood flooring, and while the flooring was still in its unfinished and raw state, we could definitely envision what the finished rooms were going to look like and it was exciting! And for just a moment, we forgot all about the messy sanding that was coming with the next step! We’ll share some of that in the next flooring post. Thanks for reading!

{Shelley}

P.S. **Disclaimer** We are not hardwood flooring installation experts. Warren did a tremendous amount of research on how to install the flooring and we also consulted with experts at the store in which we purchased our materials. Please be sure to do your own research before attempting installation on your own or hire professionals!