Tongue And Groove Floor

[Obob]

Has anyone here ever installed or helped install a tongue and groove hardwood floor?

I'm planning to do one in an attic room in my mom's house; I want to do it the more old-fashioned way, where you have to use a nailer, and then you stain and varnish, and wax (love that Johnson's Wax shine!) the wood. I've read several things online about the process, and I believe I can handle this job. These days, I'm repairing the subfloor; I should've done some of this a lot earlier, but hey, that's how you learn...:eusa_doh:

So, if anyone has any experiences or insights into doing something like this, I'd love to read about it. Thanks!

Obob

 

[StraightEight]

I've done two floors with 3/4" tongue and groove, the most recent pictured below. I'm not sure what the "newfangled" way is. The only way I know is a floor nailer, stain, and polyurethane.

I highly recommend you rent a pneumatic nailer from your local Home Depot. I've done one by hand and it's not an experience I'd want to relive. Figure 3x the time to do the floor if you do it by hand. If you don't have an air compressor, they'll rent you that as well. You'll have to play around with the air pressures until you get it right. Depends on the subfloor material. The nail should just sink into the wood but not blast through or stand proud. Occasionally you'll have to finish hammering a nail in because it doesn't go all the way in from the nailer. Use some kind of square piece of metal (I use a drift from the garage) so you can hit the nail directly and don't damage the floor plank with the hammer.

Use a spare sacrificial piece as a drift to knock the pieces into a tight fit. You'll also have to buy a tool (uh, a piece knocker-into-placer, I don't really know what it's called) which allows you to pull/tap the pieces into place when you're close to the wall. It's basically a piece of flat steel with opposite facing 90-degree elbows on both ends (looks like a long S when viewed on end). You put one elbow over the piece being knocked into place and you hammer on the other elbow. It'll be hanging from a hook in the Home Depot near where you buy the wood.

Make sure you lay out the planks in uneven lengths so the end seams are separated by at least six inches. I use a band saw to cut the pieces. I try to arrange it so I'm not cutting planks in half, just knocking off an inch or two, but that isn't always easy. If you have to cut a piece in half, save it as you can probably use it later, but waste is inevitable. A miter box would cut the planks but it's oak and that's a lot of work. I recommend power.

Picking stain is always a challenge for me because I'm usually trying (unsuccessfully) to match another floor. Remember, the color will darken, both from age and from the three coats of poly you'll put on it. So factor that into your stain decision. I use water-based polyurethane. It's easy to use, lasts forever, doesn't stink up the house, and makes for easy clean-up. Lay out the poly in long, straight strokes, from the far corner backward toward the door. Don't go back over it with the brush as you'll induce air bubbles which will mottle the finish. I sand lightly between the coats and wipe the floor with tack cloth.

Good luck!

 

[Obob]

Great Response!

Thanks Straighteight, that's just the kind of response I'm hoping to get here.

Lemme ask you this: What grit of sandpaper do you use when you sand the poly/varnish type coatings? I've known this is a good thing to do, but when I've refinished floors before, I've always been afraid I'd overdo it, and take the stuff off completely. So, my refinishing work tends sometimes looks overly coated. Do you do hand sand, or do you try using some sort of buffer?

Your tips regarding the nailer and that S tool seem right on, too. I've got a compressor, and I was gonna buy a nailer if I had to, but a place such as Lowe's (the nearest Home Depot is about 60 miles away), should have them for rent. I've also got a both a table saw and a power miter saw (we got lots of tools around here lol )with which to work.

Anyway, thanks for the input!

Obob

BTW, I'd call "newfangled" where people get this stuff that's made outta plywood and it has a finish on it, some of it's simply glued down, or even it it's solid wood, it's pre-finished, and it just doesn't have that deep finish that the traditional methods of floor finishing give you.

 

[adamjaskie]

There's some nice pre-finished stuff out there, but it's a different look. The individual boards are more distinct, usually with bevelled edges, etc. I've helped install a hardwood floor (pre-finished, but solid wood, not plywood; the installation is exactly the same, just minus all of the sanding and finishing).

Definitely rent a pneumatic nailer. There's a spring-driven model that *should* be just as fast, but it's a lot more finicky (you have to hit it just right to drive the nail in all the way in one blow) and a real workout. The pneumatic nailer is exactly the same process, but it just needs a light tap with the hammer rather than a full-arm swing.

It helps to roughly lay-out the next few rows a few feet ahead of where you are nailing, or even to have a second person work on doing that, so all you have to do is grab the boards, knock them into place, and nail.

 

[cookie]

Down Under wood is huge and they tongue and groove the end grain as well for a tight fit. Don't do top down nailing if you can - use hidden nailing. Make sure the butting is nice and tight but not over pressured where it will warp/cup. Be aware that the floor will take some time to settle. Also there may be issues with the wood becuase it is not perfect (aka natural product) and tolerances can vary a little.

 

[StraightEight]

I don't sand too heavily, and I use one of those sanding sponges (probably like 200 grit). It depends on what finish you're going for. I like to feel the natural texture of the wood so I sand lightly just to remove major imperfections, then re-coat. It's a floor, not a cabinet or a violin. When they put these houses up originally, the definitely did not finish them off with more than one or two coats of sealer. With three coats there's absolutely no danger of over finishing the wood. Remember, when you're sanding you're just removing the high points. The stuff remains in the crevices. As you add more coats, you're building up the poly. Eventually it will be like glass, but that takes a dozen coats or more. I did some woodwork for an old car where you want a glass finish. It took 14 coats of poly, four-day cures between each and sanding between each, to get the glass finish I was looking for.

Also, as someone has already noted, don't forget to leave a gap between the floor and the wall. The wood needs to breath and expand or it will buckle in periods of high humidity. You cover up the gap with the baseboard (why baseboards were invented!).

 

[Mike in Seattle]

One of the biggies I've heard is to open the boxes and set out the strips of flooring in the room for a week or two or longer so they're acclimated to the room and then you don't have problems with them shrinking or expanding once installed due to different temperatures and humidity levels.

 

[cookie]

One of the biggies I've heard is to open the boxes and set out the strips of flooring in the room for a week or two or longer so they're acclimated to the room and then you don't have problems with them shrinking or expanding once installed due to different temperatures and humidity levels.

The older builders used to turn the boards upside down and then work all over them with the rain and sun and weather pouring in then turn them over when they were propeerly seasoned and nail 'em down.

In the modern setting they must be laid out for some time (but safely) to allow for acclimatising to your environment. They are kiln dried but still conatin up to 10% moisture which needs to come down to 5% for laying. But then you can nail them down with hidden nailing and they might be right but then they might shrink too!

 

[Obob]

Keep Em' Comin'!

Thanks folks; this is all really useful.

The business about shrinkage; I was planning to have a local millshop cut the flooring; I'd better make sure they've got means to dry the wood, or else this is gonna be a much longer term venture (not that it isn't already; we've been fooling around with this project, off and on-more off than on, for 3 years ).

Oh well, this is what you do when you can't get anyone to work, without bankrupting yourself, anymore.:rage:

Obob