Installing Wood Flooring: For A Beginner?

Summary:  Wood flooring is a great home improvement project.  It not only looks great but it also stands up to a lot of wear and tear.  As long as you have basic carpentry skills and know-how you should be able to pull it off.  If you are a complete novice you might want to stick with an engineered wood flooring product.

Q:  Do you think installing wood flooring is a good project for a relative beginner or is it something I should have hired out.  I love the look of a wood floor but it's a little intimidating for me.

A:  You're in a large group of people then.  Almost every homeowner I talk to or who contacts me dreams of installing hardwood flooring or engineered wood flooring in their house.  And, it's no wonder, when done correctly they look great and add a real 'pop' to the look of your floor that you just can't get with carpet or even many tiles.

Which really brings me to my first point which is what type of wooden flooring are you actually going to install?

I've written about laminate wood flooring before and it is a good beginner project.  You don't have to nail that product down and it does cost less so if there are screw ups along the way it won't hurt your checkbook quite as much.

That doesn't mean you can't lay down any sort of real wood floor though.  But I will say the 3 keys to putting down quality wood floors is preparation, preparation, preparation.

In short, yes.  I do think a relative beginner can tackle either engineered wood flooring or regular hardwood flooring.  But, you must be patient with yourself and depending on how much of a beginner you are it wouldn't hurt to bring in a second set of eyes or a friend or family member who has tackled this sort of project before.

Below I'm going to lay out some basic steps that you should follow which will help you through the project no matter what type of wood flooring you might be installing.

1) Calculate Your Materials

A lot of folks go wrong here.  Simply take the width of the room for the wood floors to be installed in and multiply it by the length of the room.  That will give you your square footage.  Then subtract as best you can any obstructions (so for example, a kitchen island or a chimney in the living room that steals square footage, etc.).  As an aside, I would caution you to install hardwood flooring in your kitchen -  especially if you have kids.  I've known families whose child left the faucet on.  They went away for a couple of hours and the faucet overflowed.  Long story short, their poplar hardwood lifted from the sub-floor and curled.

Once you have your square footage figured add 10% for errors and insurance.

2) Think About the Layout

The layout of your wood floor is going to have a lot to do with whether or not you can consider doing it yourself.

For example, are there odd layouts?  Are there any designs you want to incorporate?  Are you trying to match up to any other existing floors?

3) Take Your Time on Preparation

Like I said above, a wood floor can look great ... but that is usually a direct result of great preparation. 

First of all, make sure your sub-floor is sound and nice and thick.  My hardwood floor is laying on 5/8" sub-floor.  It had no audible squeaks when we had carpet there and, once the carpet was torn up, I inspected it for loose joints and so forth.  Once you have established a good, solid sub-floor the next step is to think about where you want to start your floor.

I started adjacent to my kitchen tiles.  I had to make sure that the top of the wood floor when finished matched the top of the tiles because you didn't want guests or family members stubbing toes or getting tripped up going from one floor to another.

Also, give some thought to your first full course.

I went around the room and found what I thought was the squarest wall and the area where the wood floor would be looked at the most.  This is the area of the floor I started.  I ended the wood floor on the other side of the room because I didn't have to match up to anything and plus the floor would be covered by a large hutch and hidden by small corners.  In short, if that part of the room was slightly out of square (which is the case in many homes) I could hide it more easily versus trying to end the floor when I was matching up to the tile floor.

Another reason I focused so much on preparation was because I had to rent a nailer for my hardwood floors.  I didn't want to rent the nailer and then get home and plan everything out.  I'd be paying for the nailer and then get nothing done with it for a few hours which would be a waste of time.

4) Find a Helper for Layout

I started my wood floor (the first 3 or 4 courses) by laying it out myself.  It worked OK but it really slowed things down.

When you buy a wood floor the manufacturer usually supplies you with different lengths of wood flooring.  The object is to make it look random and to make sure that the seams from one course don't match up with seams from the next course.  It's much quicker to have a helper laying out the pieces ahead of you to make sure you avoid this problem.

I got my wife to do that part.  My general rule of thumb is to make sure that there are at least six inches of overlap between seams from once course to the next.

5) Wider Boards are Better for a Beginner

When you purchase your wood floor I'd recommend going with wider boards.  Not only will it look great but it makes the job a lot easier and quicker for you.  Gymnasium floors are made from very thin material.  Just a couple of inches.  They look great but it's a lot of work.

My in-laws laid a similar type wood floor and then saw mine which is 5" wide.  I think they both had flashbacks to putting their old floor in and wished this type of wider product had been available then.

6) Lay Your Floor Boards Perpendicular to the Floor Joists

A common beginner mistake with wood flooring is to just nail the boards down in any old fashion that looks good.  Instead what you want to do is find out which way the floor joists underneath are running and then run your boards perpendicular to those joists - not parallel.  This eliminates a lot of flex over time and lifting that might occur with humidity changes.

7) What Tools Do You Have?

While laying a wood floor doesn't require a lot of tools you do want to give some thought to having a table saw available.

For example, if your boards are tongue and groove (most are) then you may have to rip the tongue part of the board off to fit a board when you are finishing up the floor.  Also, you may have to rip a certain width board where the ends of your boards meet up with a different type of flooring material.

For example, my floor runs north and south.  Well, at the north end of the room there is an entry way with tile flooring.  So I ripped a 2" piece of flooring and laid it perpendicular to the floor boards (parallel to the floor joists) and ran each floor board in that section up to that board tightly.  It made for a great transition to the tile flooring and also looks very sharp.

This is by no means a step by step guide to laying wood flooring.  But it gives you some good guidelines and proves that installing a wood floor is not beyond your abilities as long as you have some basic carpentry and math skills.  However, if you are a complete novice I would stay away from installing a true hardwood floor and stick with laminated floors (engineered flooring).