Installing Solid Wood Floor

[JohnyMac]

Has anybody put down a hard wood floor? If you have I would love your input and advice.

I traded about $4K worth of hemlock trees off of the BOL property for about 1,000sf of maple and cherry flooring.  The logger had two 10? x 4? logs; one was cherry and one was curly maple. He planked the logs into boards and stored them over the winter in his shed. He then took them to a kiln to bring the moister even farther down. Well this coming week they will be planned and then tongue & grooved. Friday I am picking them up.

The maple will be in 5? & 7? widths and the cherry will be in 3? & 5? widths.

I will be filming this instillation after they sit in the cabin for a week or two.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[thatGuy]

Fuck yeah Mr Mac!

I have never installed an old school hard wood floor but I have done some remodels where we had to replace a fair amount of the stuff.

There is two tools you can't do without,

1. a good chopsaw with a fine blade in it

2. a stand up air nailer.

Buy the chopsaw, rent the nailer. A chopsaw will prove to be a valued tool for years to come.

Don't even fuck around with the one that looks like a staple gun. You will be on your knees enough doing this job.

Whats you subfloor look like?

[RS762]

That's gonna look great, congrats Johnny.  [URL=http://www.smileyvault.co

[JohnyMac]

The sub flooring is 5/8" Huber Advance tech lay-ed over 2 x 10 floor joists.

In my DIY book there is a short explanation of what to do however they talk about 2-3" boards not the width we are using.

Somewhere in my gray matter I remember someone telling me that with boards 4" and wider you need to rip a 1/4" groove on the bottom of the board and then put a coat of sealer on it before you lay it. This is what I am scratching my head over. The rest seems straight forward enough:

> Sweep and vacuum floor
> Lay felt paper
> Snap lines on felt paper to keep you on the straight
> Have a beer, then
> Spend extra time on the first board to make sure it is perfect nail down with air nail-er and screw
   ends
> Then start on the next board nailing into the tongue - Use screws where board ends join glue in
   bungs to hide screw's and continue

We have a compound miter saw that cuts up to 8" boards with ease (the kind that the blade and motor can go amid ships on a track). I will have to get a fine tooth blade for it though.

We have a compressor so I will rent the air nail-er.

Again, I am mostly concerned with the wide boards and buckling. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[thatGuy]

The boards will cup up or down. You can cut kerfs in the underside hoping that the board will lay flat even while it does so or you could lay them crown up then crown down hoping that it meets in the middle.

I go every other (up then down) because there isn't really a way to prevent it at least not on a deck.