Compared to the mundane tasks of buying materials and preparing the sub-floor, the actual hardwood floor installation process usually goes very quickly. And despite the inevitable minor problems, the work is quite gratifying. Even after many years in the flooring business, I still get a kick out of seeing a shabby sub-floor transformed into a warm, inviting surface as course after course of flooring is nailed down.
If you’ve done careful prep work before starting the hardwood floor installation, you will have anticipated (and corrected) the sub-floor’s defects. It will take a few hours to develop an efficient work rhythm, but once you do, the flooring will go down quickly and smoothly.
Hardwood Floor Installation
Minor kinks in layout and installing hardwood floors are unavoidable, however, so in this article, in addition to the fundamentals, I’ll explain some tricks of the trade for correcting problems on the fly.
Actual hardwood flooring installation happens in two stages: design and layout, followed by racking, cutting, fitting and nailing. Of the two, the design-and-layout stage is surely the more perplexing, especially for beginners. Some people have a natural knack for good floor design, but those who don’t shouldn’t find the task insurmountable so long as they’re willing to spend a few hours with a sketch pad and tape measure before even starting installing hardwood floors.
As far as design and hardwood floor installation go, strip and plank flooring are virtually identical, so nearly all of the information given here applies to both types.
Strip And Plank Design
The particular look your floor will have depends on the type of flooring (strip or plank), species, pattern, direction of layout and finish. In a previous article I discussed some floor selection criteria without regard to pattern or layout design. But during hardwood floor installation, manipulation of pattern has a dramatic effect on final appearance.
Even ordinary oak strip hardwood flooring can lend itself to a wide aesthetic range simply by changing the direction in which the strips are laid when you’re installing hardwood floors. But as you’ll soon find out, the pattern that looks best sometimes won’t work for structural or other reasons, so you’ll have to compromise your way to the second or third choice. The art of designing floors is to make the most of what will work rather than to force the ideal design into the wrong application.
To the uneducated eye, the work of an expert hardwood floor installation mechanic may appear perfect, even though the room may not be. The strips or planks will run in the best-looking direction possible, given the constraints of the sub-flooring and walls. There will be no obvious runouts or tapers, and headers and borders will appear to be balanced. In fact, a good mechanic will have manipulated the layout so that the most visible parts of the floor – what 1 call the focal points – will appear perfect, while problem areas will have been subdued or subtly fixed in the less conspicuous corners. This sort of compromise is unavoidable because no room in any house – at least none that I’ve encountered – is perfectly square, level, flat and plumb.
A room can have one or several focal points, depending on its size and shape and how many entrances there are. A focal point is what the eye settles on first when you enter the room. It’s also the area where you want the straightest rows and the tightest joints. It could be a fire place hearth, a door threshold, a group of cabinets, an open expanse of floor, a long hallway and so on. Your approach to installing hardwood floors should always be to start with the main focal point.
The idea is to center the design (and layout) around the focal points, making them as appealing as possible. The hardwood floor installation then commences at the focal points and proceeds toward less noticeable areas, where any problems can be discreetly dealt with.
Borders and headers are frequently used by floor mechanics installing hardwood floors to highlight focal points. A border is like a picture frame that wraps the focal point. It’s often a wider section of flooring, and can be mitered or lap jointed at the corners. The main field of the flooring butts to the border. Lesser features such as heating or cooling registers, island walls and stairwell openings can also be bordered.
One type of layout is called a picture frame. In this design, you border an entire cabinet line or every wall in every room throughout the entire hardwood floor installation. I like to use borders as often as possible because they’re simple but also unusual enough to give my floors a distinctive character, especially if combined with inlay.