DIY How to Install Hardwood Flooring

so today's video we are going to teach you some really cool tips and tricks for installing hardwood flooring in your home [Music] so by a large the most common type of flooring that is in the world today is hardwood flooring and I know that in North America we tend to try to move away from that a lot recently there are a lot of products on the market especially for the DIY crowd you know you've got your laminate floors which was supposed to be a cost-effective option instead of hardwood if you were changing out carpet for instance and that was true to a certain extent but it doesn't have the lifespan that hard wood has and then we have vinyl plank and sheet vinyl flooring we have carpeting we have cork flooring they've come up with bamboo but listen let's just get back to the basics when you break it all down no matter what kind of flooring you're talking about your cost per square foot is really the first thing you start to think about so aside of from performance the cost is the biggest issue right hardwood flooring run six seven dollars a square foot well there's a lot of products out there now that are competing with that price point that aren't even wood so engineered hardwood is about the same price there are a lot of laminate products out there that are luxury products right and they're all getting up in the five six dollar range so when it comes down to it a high quality product whether it's wood or vinyl or laminate is going to be about the same price for install and then one of the benefits of this is it doesn't require any kind of a subfloor material so you'll factor that into your cost you end up with a pretty cost-effective piece of flooring and it comes pre finished so you have the ability to pick whatever color you like and you also have this option 10 15 20 years from now you want to change the color sand it down and you can refinish the floor on-site and that's not something that no other kind of flooring product has that flexibility to do which is to be renewed on the site so this is a floor that will be here a hundred years from now unless somebody decides to rip it out for no apparent reason so at the end of the day harboured flooring I think is still your best option unless it's in a wet area but if you're a homeowner and you want to do a DIY hardwood floor we're going to show you all the tips and tricks today so that you're not going to be intimidated by doing something that would have traditionally be called carpentry and this is just flooring installation yes you need a couple carpentry tools but it's not all that tricky and when you'll see when we get into this that you too can do this at home and you can rent the tools to get it done it is a perfect DIY project that you can tackle in a weekend and still have plenty of time to put your furniture back in order before you get busy with the next week so like any flooring installation the key is in the preparation so before we can put the new hardwood down we got to rip up the old floor and in this case that means sheet vinyl and it has got to go this stuff is just butt ugly and it is just that easy special note be very careful these staples are extremely sharp I suggest having a roll of electrical tape one hand so when you pierce your hand you can stop the blood because when you poke yourself with one of these bad boys it's a deep cut I'm gonna put a weak spot in it when you're installing flooring your subfloor doesn't need to go right to the drywall hell it doesn't even have to go right up to the baseboard you're always gonna put four you feel free to install your subfloor a little bit shy of the end wall here man that is just frustrating I mean if you're gonna measure and cut make it a little smaller than any it's not necessary to go put tight into the wall just drivin nuts the next time you want to try to change oh yeah who's really installed to last great adhesion who are you kidding with that see it's supposed to be that easy be careful when you're on the side lift in the floor if you slip and it's under pressure it will slap you put a whole row of holes in the leg so when you're doing hardwood floor it's about the same approach to installing is any other type of flooring you want to have a clean surface you won't have it prepped you want to sweep it and vacuum make sure you vacuumed and the reason I love vacuuming is because it's kind of the last opportunity to bump into something on the floor and I'll tell you if you have a staple sticking out or something like that now this type of flooring its tongue and groove construction okay that's an end cut I don't like that what we're gonna do is just discuss real quick how to lay this out I mean you've got to have some sort of reasonable approach to the situation so here's what we're gonna need to get started again you want to know the end from the beginning so one of the fancier ways you can do it is you can buy one of these wooden grates that's designed with the tongue and groove in mine and you put that over top of your hole and you finish your floor right into it okay now in this particular situation we are coming up to an existing hardwood floor that floor was started with a full board with the groove exposed which is lovely because our wood has got a tongue on one side and some are nailing direction would be like this and that will slide right into it so what I want to do because I'm in a hallway and even if it was a larger room because I'm gonna be going this direction and I'm going this direction just because the simplicity of a hallway when you run along the long wall is really difficult to get a straight line and it's almost impossible to stitch into the existing flooring unless I was to come straight off there like this but the truth is is the wood that we're installing is a little different tone they don't make that color anymore so one of the ways we're going to help hide that is by going in a different grain because wood in a different grain even wants to say color looks different so this will help it to blend its what we want to do is just line up a few pieces all right because I don't want to start in my floor in the back of the closet and work this way it'll be impossible to have this flooring Square to that flooring and I want this nice and square so that all of my pieces are fit up nice and tight against that other floor and I don't want to have these occasional gaps that open up so these gaps are really dramatic but the more square you are the better that looks so we don't want to even be half a degree off of the angle and the way we do this there we go that's perfect is I want to have my full piece into the side of this register which is somewhat flexible I mean it can move around a little bit right and I want to have these square to this so I want to start in this area but if I start in the middle of the floor how am I going to go this way because the way that the family system works is the hardwood nailer which is gonna be our air tool of the day sits on the floor right on the edge here and it fires a nail on an angle through that tongue and into the floor okay so in order to set this up so that I can be really pretty here perfectly square here I want to just squeeze all these together all right nice what I'm gonna do is I'm taking my square putting it in the groove okay that'll help keep it nice and square and I'm gonna run it up against this wood until it's all nice and perfectly square all right it doesn't get any more square than this right there that's my spot I'm gonna take this one piece of wood alright just confirm it loving like where that closes up I'm loving everything about this so there's my start I'm just gonna pencil that in for now yeah the way I'm going to start my floor is I am going to actually screw down a piece of wood here and I'm gonna start nailing everything inverted going into the closet so that I can fill from a square position here to the other floor nailing in the right direction and then when I come back I'm gonna take this little piece of wood here I'm gonna demonstrate how this works when I come back from nailing to that wall I'm going to take this piece of wood and I'm gonna slip it into the groove like that and turn it around and then butt into the existing nailed down flooring and then start nailing the other direction to the other end of the hall this is how you can start in the middle of the room and this is Sookie when are you coming up against a finished wood you want to start where this is so if you're doing a bedroom and your bedroom door is near the end wall but there's a closet off of that you don't want to start on the far wall and work your way out of the room because when you get to the door it's a transition nightmare take the few minutes it takes set things up square off to existing hardwood flooring by a couple slip tongues these things are pre-made they're like three dollars each you can't go wrong and you put those in and you can reverse the direction of the wood so I can start square nailing the proper direction into the end of the closet and then I can come out here slip tongue turn it around and then finish all the way to there another wall that way your joints and your seams are all going to be perfect on the on the money perfect and take the time to measure up with the register because now I don't have any ugly cuts I can put all of that in with full pieces of wood and this is going to be perfect now these registers are pre-designed to be exactly the same thickness of the piece of wood from corner to corner so if I can set this up or my register will start right off the tongue then I'll finish right off the piece of wood with no cuts so the only cut you have to do is on your saw as the end cut and that's in behind here all of this start this can all be full pieces of wood right take your variation of sizes and when I'm nailing my floor in I can actually coming right in here like this and make everything perfectly tight and that's how you get a perfect installation that's there so now we have something that's incredibly strong so quick recap here before we get started because we want to remove everything out of the area that we're not going to be using so once we have the job set up you really want to reduce the number of tools use and adjust your nailer and just your hammer because there's almost no need for anything else through other than a marker and I always suggest using a black marker to make marks on wood because you will not see a pencil now we have measured off from our great we've squared off to our existing flooring we made a line we installed this plate piece of plywood onto that line and the idea behind that is when we're installing our floor there nails are driven this way the hammer action is this way but this is screwed right into the floor joist so this floor is not going to be sliding and gapping and opening up while we built and that's why this is here we want to leave this in place the slip tongue is in that wood there so that it will receive this and that'll keep the end from lifting and moving and separate and creating a trip hazard overtime which is gonna be a perfect the only thing left to do and I hate to do this but we're gonna need a little bit of construction adhesive now as a rule I try not to use this product in my house during finished installations because this stuff doesn't come out and if you make a mistake with this you've made a mistake that's gonna last for the rest your life if you don't clean it up within the first five minutes and making a mess this does not come off with any kind of solvent the PL construction adhesives there's different varieties there's 200 400 series but the PL premium does not clean up so beware that be very particular when you put this down and the reason I'm gluing this one in place is because this is where I'm gonna be changing direction and when I change direction I am going to have two pieces of wood back-to-back and there's no fastener here so I don't want this to open up and be moving around so we're gonna glue this one in place and I don't want to use any surface nails so I'm simply gonna glue that in place and then start when I drive this nail down to pull the whole board flush and when I come back around the other way it'll be pretty much in place forever so this is the boss stitch hardwood nailer tool rental gotta love it home to rentals you can get these things set up for 3/4 hardwood 1/2 inch hardwood bamboo and engineered flooring those are four distinct different thicknesses so they have four different settings for these plates that go on the bottom generally the rental stores will have them a series of tools will have a few of each available at any one time and it loads from the top real simple just like any other staple machine that's out there take a couple of tracks drop them in and you're loaded boom energized that's simple and the way we install aute every six inches you want to throw it in now ok and because it's my first strip I'm only gonna nail where I've got plywood screwed down just to make my life simple and you want to give it a good firm shove so I'm a big fan of every six to eight inches and really the goal here is to put that the nylon plate on top of the finish wood slide it right up against it and set it so that it's not leaning one way or the other that's the whole system I am just using this motion here okay ah not necessary you don't over kill it if you hit the hill this thing too hard you'll end up putting dents in the front edge of your what so just nice and easy okay just the wrist don't use the arm if you start swinging with the arm you're gonna hurt something or someone all right so now we've demonstrated how the nail gun works I'm gonna demonstrate the hammer the uses of it you see the angle on that the reason it's set like that is because this is what you use to move your flooring around as long as you hold it on the ground the part of the hammer that contacts the wood is always at the bottom of the wood and never near the finish all right so you can slide everything into place close up all your gaps tap everything into place and then set your nail are down this is where this gets fun nice look at that perfect gap that is how you do a joint ladies and gentlemen aside from that really the only secret that's left here is dealing with your aging and that's a kind of a crazy concept but what it is is talking about where are the joints in the wood you don't want to have anything that's reoccurring like a pattern over and over and over in your floor so if you put your wood together like this and every other board is four inches off you're gonna run into major problems now generally speaking hardwood flooring comes milled based on the the strength and the straightness of a tree so there's varying sizes so you'll find that there will be a whole lot of pieces in the box of the same size it's different than laminate or vinyl everything's the same size everything here is different so what I like to do is use as many of those long boards as possible to try to eliminate the need for too many little pieces and hard wood comes in different grades so you can actually buy them where they're all little pieces and that's like leftover wood that's thrown in a box is sold as a hardwood floor it looks like a really cheap puzzle when you're all done because there's nothing but joints so if you buy quality for another couple bucks a square foot you'll get boards that are four six eight feet long and that makes a beautiful floor but now all we got to do is measuring cut yeah so what I've got I've got three rows started I'm gonna actually go take one trip to the saw and do all the cuts for this because running back and forth is your killer this is where all your time goes so the more running back and forth you do the bath that harder it is now here's how you measure the same kind of system going this way take your wood turn it around lift it up on edge slide it over until it touches your baseboard and then mark so you're actually cutting this wood on your mark just 1/16 shy of the actual size okay that gives it all that room for expansion contraction underneath your baseboard okay which is lovely and it'll make sure that you can finish off with a really nice tight shoe mold and you don't have to use a great big thick ugly quarter-inch so same thing I'm going to turn around it's up on edge run it over to us and contact the baseboard that's two rows and then I'm gonna use this board here okay don't be concerned I'm gonna be cutting and using this groove part and I'm gonna be left with a clean cut so I can't use that at the door but I can use a clean cut to start a row anywhere else along the walls so I'll actually set that piece aside and use it later you don't want to have hardly any waste here so whenever you're making an off cut try to keep it to less than four inches if possible feel free to look through the box and get the perfect fit because we're running a little behind today with the project so I'm gonna eat while I work that's probably a bad one to show it on but when you're installing your end pieces just remember that when you have this angle the distance from here to here is longer than from here to here so set it like this hold this wood tight on this corner and then pull this side in and it actually is slowly pushing the wood back until it's a perfect fit and you don't always get a nice perfect fit when you do it that way so just to make mention the machine makes a very distinctive sound when it's out of staples it takes a little practice to get used to hearing it so my suggestion is if this is the first time you're laying a hardwood floor every few rows just pull up the track here double-check and see how your staple suck your supply is doing because when you hit it the wood will be very snug and it does fit pretty good compression and it makes a dent all right and it looks like there might be a staple there so it can be a little deceiving and you don't want to get all the way through a whole row of flooring start the next row and then you hit without any staples and then two rows of Woodill bounce and it'll start to open up and that's when you'll figure out that you were doing it without staples and I just thought I'd save you a little bit of grief so here's how you figure out how to cut this because when you're done you want to have it really tight to that wood right so what you do is just set it up like this and make your marker right on the edge because that's where you want to cut your wood okay you see that and then you turn it around that sets the thickness set it in your groove and this is why marker is awesome because wherever you mark that's the thickness of a blade so when you're working with hardwood use your marker to determine where you want the blade to go so you can see I've got my blade will go there and here and then you can use a square or really good fingers now I'm going to line up my blade my marker so I'm cutting exactly where my marker is always get it up to full speed before you make contact with the wood especially hard wood you burn your saw out if you start and bending this in too early no perfect [Music] okay so this is ultimately the problem this isn't square so it fits here one figure yeah nice so unfortunately that means I have to cut the entire thing because I need to slide it in so I got to take another saw blade off and the way I cut this would really is gonna tick off the safety trolls oh hey quick question for safety trolls while we're at it what's more important wearing safety shoes so that you don't step on a nail once in a while or not wearing safety shoes so you don't need a knee replacement when you get older hmm [Music] nice yeah not bad for a chop saw now I would say probably want to say this that's not the recommended technique for cutting a piece of hardwood but generally speaking I like the cheap because whenever my cuts less than six inches why would I want to set that move the cord and set up another side we are approximately one to four rows from the wall and this makes it really tricky now you'll see professional floor installations these guys end up making marks and dents all through the drywall when they put their flooring in because honestly that is really difficult to do I can't get any closer with this machine so now the only way that we can go any further with a fastening system when you get this close to the wall is to put down that construction adhesive that we were talking about earlier the PL premium and you can use a brad nail gun like you would use on finishing trim okay so this is exactly what you're gonna see in condominium apartments where or applications where you're putting hardwood on concrete it's time to careful you can't put it everywhere this concrete doesn't go in basements directly on the basement because there's too much moisture transfer there but in an apartment building it's actually quite handy because it's conditioned space above and beneath the concrete so there's no moisture transfer so what we're looking at is all these boards are the ones that we cut just a little while ago so you can actually set that in the adhesive sorry I forgot already in my hammer here and we are going to tap this the closer get ups attached or Brad now all these are routine gauge nails two-inch all right it's probably a little longer than I need but I don't like to walk around with too many kinds of nails and the idea here is we're gonna put the nail in the same location in that tongue as we would have right where that adhesive is and it goes in the same every six inches just like a stable now that nail isn't gonna hold anything down over time but what it will do it'll hold that wood into that adhesive until the adhesive is dry and then that floor isn't them that were you opening up moving around if all you're using is Brad nails guaranteed that wood is gonna start opening up you're splitting on you know you always got this angle you're gonna have to practice a little bit so you're not nailing through the surface no I need one other thing here my drill I know my nail punch and it's a perfect nut punch and it is the Robertson drill bit and that comes in man I screw gun I can set that on that nail here we go you can use that technique for anywhere you find a nail so you know that's usually pretty handy place to be so in this situation when you're getting to the door areas of your home he's very removing flooring that exists and you're putting in hardwood you're probably going to run a situation where your door casings are lower because you would have had carpet or laminate or vinyl in this case it was a vinyl floor but then they added plywood and then tile so we're actually even though we're putting in a 3/4 inch thick floor we're gonna be a little thinner than the old trim so this is gonna be a gap but this is what we call a dovetail saw if you've never seen one before it switches around so that you can actually set your flooring in place okay put your saw on that and then you can cut you could cut your trims with this fine-tooth saw and if you're working on the other side you just push down your little spring-loaded trapdoor spin it around and now it's another side saw so this cuts right and left hand it only runs just a little under 20 bucks and if you don't have an expensive power tool and you're doing flooring in your home this kind of tool here can save you a lot of time and money and give you a real professional finish this way once you've got that cut all your flooring can slide underneath your trim okay and then you don't have a big ugly gap it seems odd but now I've taught you every technique you know to hardwood the entire room how to start a nice transition how to get underneath your trim how to butt up and how to make your cuts how to close it and nail it and glue it and pin nail it how to finish up against the wall the only thing we haven't talked about now is how to finish up around that heat great so we're gonna just do this we're gonna change direction now so that you get the entire experience in one short little video and you don't have to hang around for the next two hours watch and we do the same thing now the advantage here is that when you're working with this flooring it's nice to always have your hose coming from behind you you're not over we have the tongue here now which fits into the groove of the old floor look what happens here like there's bridges and gaps there's no way to close that nice and tight okay you is why we also want to consider reaching but we want to get our premium in here now and just to try to help keep things clean I'm only going to glue the size of each port at at one time like with any fine too so it's more about the speed than the pressure okay you have the option if you want to glue this in but honestly if both these pieces of wood are glued to the floor there's no need to have this tongue glued in but if you want to you could just lay it in the glue for a second like that and then stick it in now we have a transition I just take my board arrested in police go back to our hammer and now we've turned this wood in the opposite direction there we go now remember I was talking about the angle of this see how when we're changing boards in the different direction here I'm finishing with my mic roof when I set this on the floor and make contact with the wood you see the gap at the top I'm not actually contacting the finish because I have this on the ground so I can hit that even standing up I can slide it in and close it up nice and tight and because of the rest of this floor is already nailed in it's not going to be moving around on me so I was getting a little too comfortable and I never hit this one hard enough my staples sticking out so now my piece of wood it's not gonna be able to close gotta get that recess so steal that drill bit again and hit it near the outside okay you are not gonna be able to drive it on an angle so don't even attempt that the goal is just to bend it down so that the wood can slide it works out so we're gonna do we're simply gonna mark this wood right here I know call me crazy this is why we have a knife another time for another trick no there's not a whole lot of strengthen that wood there to fight with that knife you see how it just Whittle it off it's kind of like a bar of soap I'm just taking a little bit done one more trip trick so in this situation you might think well let's do what we did the other end there will cut the sliver and that's an option but honestly when you're cutting that much of a sliver out of a piece of wood what you want to do is you want to cut across come down a couple of times because when you start here you're more than likely gonna split that piece off and it'll twist and tear going backwards the other option is if you can get underneath that casing we'll get rid of some of this tongue here on the saw so I can butt right up against the jam and then we'll install this wood and then what I'll do is I'll make make a fabrication for this little piece on my table saw later and I'll just drop it in place I only need the top piece of the wood I don't need the full length so I'll just take my table so I'll rip down a piece and drop it in with the adhesive after the fact and just set it right in there and that'll be perfect right here sit install me we're using the grooves on all the wood to hold this in place then that crazy the one thing about these grates that's interesting is this wood is a hardwood so this is actually strong enough to be stepped on not strong enough to be putting furniture on it I don't think you're gonna be setting furniture on it then definitely go with a metal grade we have got 1-inch pieces and a 13 inch it's for right okay so I'm going to go four pieces at one inch off of this and then here they're going to keep the tongue because when we install this we want this tongue to go into here to hope the oldest register in place so measure right to the drywall and then mark boat a quarter inch off okay one two yeah I'm just using some full boards here one two three because that's the end of the box so this is a perfect place for adhesive because what we're gonna do here is we're gonna just set them ladies and pull them nice and tight yeah I'm not gonna put a brad nailer in this until I get it all installed because I don't want to run the risk of splitting all the wood up know that I got it all here I'm gonna actually go through the surface I'm gonna nail through the surface where I know my base shoe is gonna cover it hold your gun nice and tight to the wood if you have any gap at all in there or not enough pressure is you're gonna leave that head sticking out and you're gonna have a mess to clean up later we want to be careful that we're not putting too much force into this grille and these little nails we want to just kind of be careful here come straight on this close it up with your hands close it up nice in the middle these ones I've actually cut so they're all the same size so we're gonna close the far side first all right there we go that keeps everything nice and tight we're gonna let the nails the staples pull this joint tape well there we go that's pretty much all I got for tips and tricks for doing a hardwood flooring now remember every aspect of this video you can use in different scenarios so as long as you know how to square things and glue things and screw things and nail things and cut things and measure things you should be okay just remember when you're doing a job like this every time you put a fastener into something you want to be completely happy before you're committed okay if you don't like what's going on stop and take a step back and just go take a little break think through it and make sure that you're going to be completely satisfied once you've thrown that faster in the floor you don't want to come back when a job is all done to go we got to really wish I would have taken more time with something so yes some cuts can be really frustrating and take a lot of effort before you get them right but having it just perfect is worth the effort okay thanks for joining us on this video I hope you've got all the information you need so that you can renovate your home now and put in some beautiful brand-new hardwood floors remember there's a site finish there's not to do after you know it down would sleep so if you like this kind of content get myself thumbs up like this video comments and questions even the safety trolls are allowed in the comments below where they answer those every day and we love to give those kind of questions to help you with your renovation project remember our goal is to help you make a fortune renovate in your home don't forget to join us on Instagram that's new and exciting we've got a lot of really good engagement with our art our viewers that way and we're looking forward to having you there don't forget to check the description for tools and comments and products and all that kind of stuff and I'll link to our Shopify page so you can do shopping for brands that I love okay I've gone out and I found products that we can supply for you and get you a better deal look for discount codes in the description of our videos look forward to seeing you next time [Music]

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 1,230,207

Rating: 4.7301335 out of 5

Keywords: hardwood flooring, hardwood, wood flooring, hardwood floor, hardwood floors, diy hardwood floor, how to install hardwood floors, hardwood installation, hardwood flooring installation, hard wood flooring, hardwood floor installation, hardwood floors installed, diy hardwood floor installation, diy hardwood flooring, hardwood installation diy, how to install hardwood flooring yourself, hardwood flooring installation video, hardwood flooring installation diy, hardwood flooring diy

Id: RTRl-rD_Ju0

Length: 38min 57sec (2337 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 20 2018