How to Install 3/4 Inch Tongue and Groove Wood Floors
Even with the wide array of different flooring materials available today, basic hardwood tongue-and-groove planks remain a popular choice for purists. The standard thickness for the boards is ¾ inches, which is thicker than most other types of flooring you'll lay. Start with a solid foundation of plywood if there is not already a previous hardwood floor. Make sure to let your new floorboards sit in the room for a week or more before installation, so they can adjust to the local environment, which will minimize movement of the boards later. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Roll out flooring felt over the whole floor in slightly overlapping courses, cutting them at the ends with a utility knife and stapling them down with a regular staple gun.
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Set a row of flooring planks alongside your starting wall, with the grooves facing the wall. Leave a half-inch gap between the edges of the boards and the wall. This will give the floor room to expand with climate changes. Connect the boards together end to end, nailing them down with a small nail gun, shooting nails through the surface in pairs, every foot or so.
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Measure and cut the last board in the row on a miter saw. Leave the same ½ inch gap by the wall.
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Set the next few courses of flooring in place next to the first one, locking the edges together by their tongue-and-groove milling and nailing them through the top. Stagger the ends of the planks from course to course by mixing different sizes.
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Set up your floor stapler with its pneumatic tank. Lay the next courses of flooring alongside the first, shooting the nails in through the sides with the flooring stapler, just above the tongue. Trigger the stapler by striking the firing pad with a rubber mallet, which will drive the boards tightly together.
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Work your way across the room course by course, shooting staples every foot or so through the sides of the boards. Cut the end boards as necessary on your miter saw. Continue until you no longer have room for the stapler.
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Lay the last few courses with your nail gun, top-nailing as you did at the beginning. Use a table saw to length-cut the final course so there is a 1/2-inch gap there. The floor trim will cover the gaps.
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References
- Photo Credit wood image by Zbigniew Nowak from Fotolia.com
