Tag: hardwoods

We first ran this article in 2010. It provides detailed instructions for installing hardwood flooring over a wood substructure. It chronicles tutorials for each step of the process, derived from our installation of 3/4 inch solid, tongue-and-groove Brazilian Walnut hardwoods in our own home! At the bottom, we provide links to posts on the tools we use and frequently recommend for hardwood installation.... 

Whenever we’re about to undertake a hardwood flooring project, we always turn first to Lumber Liquidators. We’ve found them to be helpful, and we really prefer and recommend their Bellawood product. If you’ve been reading here for some time, you probably remember that we installed more than 1000 sq. ft. of their Bellawood Brazilian Walnut product last Summer in our own home. A good... 

Gaps in hardwood floors can be a huge visual annoyance. Not only are they an eyesore, they can also collect dirt and dust. Hardwood gaps are generally caused by one of a few installation errors:improperly acclimating the hardwoods prior to installation; failing to install the first board perfectly straight in a hardwood flooring installation; failing to keep boards straight when working around an... 

Over the summer, we spent two weeks telling you about our installation of more than 1000 square feet of Brazilian Walnut flooring in the first floor of our colonial home. We compiled the entire experience into a series of more than a dozen tutorials for installing hardwood floors that cover all the details of a typical wood floor installation. The series was a resounding success, and one of the most... 

We’ve reached then end of our hardwood flooring installation! We’re thrilled with the results and we hope you found our two weeks of tutorials helpful if you decide to tackle this job in your own home. We wanted to share some “after” pictures of the remodel with you as inspiration for your own hardwood job! This is the final post in our series on how to install hardwood floors.... 

Baseboard and shoe molding dress up a new hardwood flooring installation. After you’ve put in the time installing the new floor, trimming it out frames the floor, showcasing the hardwoods just like a quality frame showcases quality art. Baseboard comes in many different shapes and sizes and should be picked based on a balanced approach to style and money.  The simplest builder-grade primed white... 

In our review of the DuoFast Floormaster 250BN we make substantial reference to the term blind nailing when describing fastening the first few and last few hardwood boards in place. If you’ve never heard the term blind nailing, you’re probably wondering what exactly it means. Blind nailing is setting a nail into the hardwood flooring board at a 45 degree angle, just above the tongue of... 

Many modern homes have heating and air conditioning vents located on the edges of floors in the room, as opposed to ceilings or walls. When this is the case in a hardwood installation, you must remove wood in the shape of the vent. In every case, except with the widest hardwood boards (5 inches or greater), this will involve cuts in at least 2 of the boards to accommodate the flooring. If you get... 

Many hardwood installations require you to transition from one room to another, sometimes around a dividing wall that has an outside edge that will require a new first board. An outside edge occurs when you install hardwoods around an object and are effectively left creating a new starting row along the outside edge of the object.  Take a look at this picture from our installation for tw0 example... 

Today marks the half way point in our series on hardwood flooring, and we thought it worthwhile to address some of the concerns as you lay hardwood throughout the “field” of the floor. Laying in the field is usually the most rewarding and fastest part of a hardwood flooring installation. In fact, in our article on laying the first hardwood boards, we noted that once you get past the first...