Installing Wood Flooring

Wood floors are attractive, cost effective and practical. A well-maintained, highly finished hardwood floor is more appealing than any other floor covering material. But a damaged wood floor may become a nightmare for you. So, to avoid future inconveniences, you must be careful from the start, that is, from the days of installing wood flooring. Wood is highly responsive to moisture and temperature. Owing to their unique climatic behaviors, woods require special treatments to make them use worthy for flooring.

Before commencing the work of installing wood flooring, you must consult an independent expert to know what type of hardwood would be ideal for your situation. Special precautions that need to be observed for bathroom floors must be known to you in advance; else, after completing the installation of wood flooring there, you may face trouble preserving them.

There is a marked difference between the traditional wood floor workings and the modern practices. In earlier days, installing wood flooring was a cumbersome job with fastening of wood strips or planks with subflooring and finally accomplishing sanding and finishing operations. Today's wood strips or planks come pre-finished and do not demand finishing work post installation.

Though traditional means of installing wood flooring is highly effective, their long dusty complex mechanical operations have made them less popular and people are now drifting fast towards the readymade flooring options. In any case, you need a perfectly leveled clean and structurally sound base for moving ahead with installing wood flooring.

To optimize your effort of having an ideal wood floor, consider following these guidelines:

• Purchase at least 3 layered hardwood ply, preferably of white oak, from nearby trusted mill.
• Stack the purchased ply indoor for at least 3-4 days before installing wood flooring, it will allow the hardwoods to get acclimated to the moisture level.
• Place a mark perpendicular to the floor joists and plan your floor installation along with it.
• Mark the reference line accurately to guide your installation.
• Mark a line at least 1/2" away from all the perimeter walls to indicate edge positions for the boards and to allow the wood to expand seasonally.
• Plan on using the longest boards for the initial row while working for installing wood flooring.
• Subfloor may be covered with a deposit of 15 pound asphalt felt to increase moisture absorption capability.

Tools play a major role in achieving desired level of success in installing wood flooring. Inappropriate usage or inadequacy of tools may jeopardize all your dedicated efforts of having prestigious wooden floors. In order to have highest degree of finish while installing wood flooring, you should use essential specialized tools, tools used in installing wood flooring include a caulking gun, circular saw, drill/driver, hammer, leveling compound, pry bar, putty knife, rags, sandpaper, scraper long-handled, sponge damp, straightedge, tape measure, utility knife, vacuum cleaner, vapor barrier, wood floor glue, and yard broom.