Ever since buying our home, we have been eager to replace both the (hideous)
kitchen and dining room floors. While the dining room floor isn’t nearly as
offensive, a couple of the tiles had already come up, and we were pretty lazy
in covering it when we re-painted the room, so it was easily a candidate. As
well, given that we’ve never installed a floor, and the dining room floor –
unlike the kitchen — is basically square, we decided to start with that room
to get an idea of the process.
We found a very good guide to installing a hardwood
floor,
which was quite useful. We certainly bought enough wonderful bamboo
wood beforehand, but the tools were generally
purchased and rented in the Friday before the weekend. In short, the
following were used:
- pneumatic floor nailer (2: the first one jammed/failed just after the store it was rented from closed for the remainder of the weekend; Home Depot was still open, however)
- air compressor
- rubber mallet
- pry-bar
- miter box + hand-saw
- measuring tape, square
- normal hammer
- paint scraper
- finishing nailer
We started pulling up the existing floor on Thursday night with the two tiles
that had already come up in the last year … trying to understand how hard
that would be. Luckily, the original floor installers had used very little
glue. The tiles came up without much effort, and left nothing behind. The
sub-floor was in great shape, ready to accept a new floor.
The installer in the aforementioned guide did some nifty drilling to create
well-countersunk nail wells and covering plugs for the initial row of
flooring. We, uh, didn’t do this. After carefully aligning the first row,
we tried in vain to nail some finishing nails straight through, but bamboo is
106% harder than Red Oak, the manufacturer proudly proclaims. At this point,
for some reason, we also didn’t have the finishing nailer. So, we used the
floor nailer directly applied to the surface, creating some unsightly
blisters on the first row. However, that row was now solidly attached to the
subfloor. We looked at the remainder of the unfinished floor, and put our
first folly behind us.
The remainder of the rows slotted nicely into place. As mentioned, this room
is simple, and thus has only 3 widths. As the planks were tounge-in-groove
and end-matched, there was some thought-work required to make sure we had the
appropriate cuts to create “in-nie” and “out-ie” pieces for the left and
right sides as we alternated seams. There was a section where my measurement
was a bit off, so we had 2 rows that ended in a 1 inch gap from the wall. We
agreed that wide trim would hide a multitude of sins, and pressed on.
We were also lucky in that we only had to cut one (1) notched piece, around
one of the heater vent covers. All the other transitions were “perfectly”
aligned. There were multiple “will you look at that!” and “my word”. It was
good.
Of course, the last row didn’t work quite so nicely, and needed to be
“ripped” … as I now understand, a word meaning “to cut a thin piece of wood
the long-way”. I started into the short segment with the hand-saw in the
basement, but the bamboo – 106% stronger than Red Oak – did not
like this idea. As well, just given the geometry of the saw and cutting
through a long piece of wood, a saw toothed pattern emerged. We resolved
that trim would be our friend, and pressed on. We did, however, call Home
Depot to find out that they do in fact cut wood that you do not buy there, as
the long segment was forthcoming.
On the 2nd Home Depot trip of that day (after getting the finishing nailer),
I found out that they cannot rip pieces unless it’s plywood wider than 12
inches. Dejected, we returned home, having no other option but to saw our
arms off.
After returning, and even after starting to saw, we looked for options. We
settled on perforating the board with a series of closely-spaced drilled
holes, which would reduce the volume of wood by a good fraction … at least
half. This actually worked pretty well; at times, the hand saw cut through
inches of board as like butter. With the last piece cut, and luckily
fitting, we ended the second night with an un-trimmed but finished floor.
When we do the kitchen, we’ll make only a couple of changes:
* have the finishing nailer at the beginning
* rent a table saw
But, otherwise, we’re looking forward to another nice home improvement
project.
And that damn kitchen floor being gone.
