Wednesday, June 27, 2012

How to Install American Walnut Flooring

 

How to Install American Walnut Flooring

 

Do-it-yourself projects can save you a lot of money and be really rewarding too. Up near the top of that list is certainly successfully installing a hardwood floor – a very tricky job indeed.

A new hardwood floor, such as the stylish American walnut flooring, can totally transform the atmosphere of a room.

A job will be more difficult depending on the condition of the floor and the types of flooring used. The types of flooring you’ll likely be using will be solid wood strips and planks, wood parquet, pre-finished engineered-wood flooring and faux wood floors made of laminates.

Every type has its advantages and disadvantages: solid wood-strip and plank flooring is arguably the most difficult to install, largely because installation requires sanding and finishing.

It is essential that new American walnut flooring should only be installed on a clean, dry, smooth, level, structurally sound flooring base. It’s also vital to allow the flooring material to adjust to the room’s humidity before installation.

To cut the flooring to the size you require use a power saw that has a fence, like a job saw and a table saw.

When fastening your American walnut flooring to the subfloor, you can use one of two methods: face nailing and blind nailing. Both can be completed using finishing nails and a hammer, but it is much faster and easier to use a power nailer for face nailing. If you’re going for blind nailing then you should use a pneumatic flooring nailer.

Getting the first rows of flooring correct is the most important step, so for this choose very straight boards. From there, you should cut one starter board for each row and these should vary in length by at least 6 inches so that the end joints will be staggered by at least 6 inches from row to row.

Once you’ve finished the first row of flooring, you should then start working inwards to the centre of the room. Fit a board for the second row so that its groove locks tightly with the tongue of the first row. You should use a tapping block to protect the tongue and allow the boards to secure tightly against the first row for gluing. From there you can just continue to lay rows of boards as you see fit across the rest of the floor, ensuring that they fit compactly against one another and are securely fitted in place to a tough solvent

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