did my hardwood floor. Never did this kind of DIY before. Turned out to be
ok but no perfect. The following is what I did. Hope it will be useful to
some of you.
1. Make sure you have the right subfloor for hardwood floor
2. Buy hardwood floor and open boxes in the room to acclimate hardwood
boards for 1 or 2 weeks (avoid winter to do installation)
3. Remove baseboards
4. Remove carpets
5. If drywall does not directly touch the subfloor, check if the gap
is big enough to insert your hardwood board. If not big enough, use a piece
of hardwood board as a guild and undercut the drywall. The purpose of this
is that you can use a single baseboard later to cover floor expansion gap
and you will not need to install quarter round if you do not like it,
because there is already a gap behind the drywall (2/1”) so you do not need
to leave a big expansion gap between the drywall and your hardwood boards).
6. Check subfloor. Add screws where applicable to fix squeaking
7. Check if the subfloor is level. if level you are in luck. Otherwise
you have to do sth. A non-level subfloor is the biggest headache in
installing hardwood floor.
8. Thoroughly vac clean the subfloor
9. Determine which direction your hardwood boards will go. Normally they
should perpendicular to joists. You can know by nailing patterns on
subfloor what direction your joists go.
10. Now take your time to decide where you should start your first row of
boards. If you are doing a few adjoining rooms, you must be careful about
many factors: (1) will all hardwood boards be installed in the same
direction; (2) do you need transition from room to room? Etc. etc.etc.
11. You normally start your first row near the longest wall. Donot start
in the middle of room unless you know and want to do direction reverse (
remember you can only nail through tongues).
12. Layer #15 black felt paper on the subfloor. You donot have to cover
the whole floor all at once. Just cover enough for the first few rows of
boards. You can overlap felt paper so no need to staple.
13. take the measurements of the room and mark accurately a center line.
Draw parallel lines to this center line, from the starting wall. These lines
should be perpendicular to the floor joists.
14. Install the first row by face nailing (also you can shoot a few nails
at 45 o through tongues by using a finish nailing gun).
15. Try your air nailer on the 2nd row. If you donot have enough room,
you will have to install the 2nd row just as you do with the first row.
(to be continued)