I can save a bundle by installing wide wooden plank flooring in my new house, which will start next spring. Its a Carlisle flooring product, pre-sanded & pre-stained. Aprox 1700 sq ft. I have always done lighter general carpentry projects and a good amount of woodworking and feel comfortable with the idea of tackling this myself.
My queation is this: Having never installed wooden flooring, should I attempt this and what hurdles do I need to be aware of ?
Thanks for any suggestions.
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Not a very difficult job. "Wide Plank" always makes me nervous......Anything 3 1/2 " AND OVER SHOULD BE SURFACE NAILED. Last year I instaled a 4" cherry floor in a customers family room and they insisted that it be edge nailed....I am very glad that I had them sign off on the job...sure enough they are havng issues with cupping. It has been resanded and refinished already and may never lay down flat.....In New England heat dries the floor in the winter and the humidity swels them in the summer. This constant swing plays hell with floors. The "engenered lumber" prefinished flooring one the market is much more stabe than solid wood flooring.
Mike, thanks for the info. The cupping was one of the things I was concerned about. I am also considering the engineered planks. If I am going to do this myself, I want the least amount of problems as possible. Thanks.
No problem, If this is new work be sure to leave room for the floor to move under where the trim will go. (Only board width will move...no the length sides...if that makes any sense).
I installed a wide plank, antique pine floor from Carlisle about a year ago. Wasn't too hard, looks great, and has no cupping/warping issues. I live near D.C. where I don't have big heating issues, and a heat pump to take the humidity down in the summer.
The advantages I see of this over an engineered floor are that you won't have glues in the floor off-gassing and you won't be cutting down trees to make your floor. I also love the old character look of the floor.
They had me glue (PL Premium is relatively low-VOC) the floor down in addition to standard nailing and I gather this is to help with cupping/crowning issues. I also put nails near the ends of the 10" planks for added protection.
I found that I spent a lot of time "staking" the flooring before installation and then sorting through the boards to weed out bad ones and to match the others. Gluing an nailing was the easy part -- I rented a manual nailer.
My subfloor was in good shape, but if you have ridges between the subfloor panels, you will spend some time on that.
My mitre saw wasn't big enough to get across a 10" plank and either flipping the boards or using a circular saw often did not produce a perfect butt cut. Small gaps at the butts look fine and bigger ones can be filled with scrap wedges. A bigger saw might help.
Putting Tung oil down was a breeze, though there was (pleasant) odor for about a month afterward. I did not sand the floor.
I filled some of the old bolt holes in the boards with epoxy, but I'm not sure if I like them filled better than not-filled.
Thanks for the input. The cupping issue seems an easy fix. If I do this myself, I figure that I at least can get a new sliding mitre saw out of it and still save a lo. thanks.