How NOT to Install Wood Floor

hi there my name is Robert bags co-founder builddirect how to videos are great to show you how to do things I love them today we're going to do something a little different we're gonna show you how not to install a floor we're looking at I came across a job site here that had installed some or is in the process of installing some engineered flooring that was purchased from Bill direct but I found quite a few things that you know I'd like to point out to you and hopefully you won't make the same mistakes and and have some of the same challenges this is an engineered floor but most of what I will say will apply to hardwood flooring engineered flooring laminate flooring any hard surface flooring installation because it's mostly around preparation and really thinking the project through before you start most of the problems can be solved before you even begin the installation so let's get into some of the details okay so you've ordered your floor whatever type of flooring that might be it arrives at your house the first thing you do is you make sure you got the right floor you don't want to be installing the wrong color or the wrong grade so you open up a few boxes you check the labels and make sure it is what you actually ordered number two you don't just start installing you're going to need to app acclimate the product that means it needs time to sit in the room for 24 48 hours to seven days or even longer depending on your environment look at your installation instructions from whatever company you buy the flooring from or from the Bill Direct website and make sure that whatever product you're getting acclimates in the environment for the proper period of time and this just makes sure that the movement is to be reduced and you're not gonna be putting in something a product that's gonna move a whole bunch once it gets used to the environment finally you want to make start start focusing on site preparation okay what are your rooms look like on the floor it's a floor level is it clean and if it's not level you have to take action to make sure that it is level and that's a different video for a different time but making sure that the environment is clean ready for a good installation making sure you have all the proper tools and events to do your cuts and to do you know whatever it is you're going to need to do and whatever type of installation you've chosen all of those things are readily available on your installation instructions that either come with the product or is available on the website so in this video we're going to show you specific examples of what not to do and how to avoid these problems let's get started when you're first starting you want to look at your room and decide where are you gonna start installing which wall you're going to start installing off of and let's talk about walls walls it's the naked eye this wall looks like it's straight the reality is most walls particularly in a renovation the walls are not straight okay so you can't trust the wall being perfectly straight and then working your installation off of that wall because you're gonna end up with problems your floor is gonna you know fade away from you or it's going to fall off this wall so the way you avoid that is is you drop a chalk line okay and that's that's something again you can look it up on Google you can look it up on our website how to draw up a chalk line but a chalk line is gonna be a true line for you to start the installation from so unless the wall find out if the wall is perfectly straight and if it is great you can install off that wall but I strongly recommend that you drop a chalk line first and that would give you a true straight line on which to start the installation okay so let's assume that the wall is either straight or you drop your chalk line so you're gonna have a straight line to start off of okay so now let's look at the materials that you're gonna use to install and make sure your room has really nice flow okay so you can either buy product that has fixed lengths or you can buy product that has random links a lot of the products in the marketplace for solid hardwood are engineered do have random links so you need to assess the materials that you have random lengths means you'll have some pieces that are one foot or twelve inches 2 feet 3 feet 4 feet maybe 5 feet 6 feet it depends on the product that you've purchased so when you're installing to make sure your rooms gonna flow the longer planks are usually visually more attractive right so you want to save those to either you know for the center of the room or put them in locations that people are gonna see them the most the shorter planks you tend to want to hide them a bit alright so you want to put those in closets or you want to put them in the corner we want to put them in areas that you know furniture is going to be or you know a dresser is going to be you want to put those out of the way whenever you can and I again you're thinking about what's the flow of the room gonna look like so at this particular installation 7 rows of product have been installed and I want to show you how there's no flow in how they delayed this out they didn't plan this properly and hopefully you can avoid doing the same mistake so here's an example of poor flow starting on the first line which is extremely important the whole rooms going to come off of that first line there's several pieces in a row here that are short pieces and then when the next row comes up they put another short piece in beside these 3 other short pieces so you have a cluster of four short pieces and you can see it just doesn't look right and it just looks choppy so a particular concern for a visual look these boards just haven't been staggered the visual is just just not right take a look seam here seam joint here there should never be this close you need at least ideally I think eight inches you can get away with five or six inches some people say but I'm thinking eight inches on your staggered gaps throughout the park still talking about the first row here you need to measure your room and then you need to do a dry fit run so what that means is you want to know when you're done installing off your first wall what is the last board going to look like against the far wall and there's a concept called ripping aboard and ripping a board just means cutting a board along the length of the board okay so cutting it up the middle let's say if you're going to do a cut you need to make sure that if it's if say it's a five inch wide plank there's enough left on your cut when you rip the board to to you know be installed either staple click log or glue together to that final plank and so you don't want to have a one inch strip you want to have ideally you know a couple of inches then there's enough for for structural integrity there so if you're going to rip a board you want to rip a board to start with and at the end to make sure the hereit is close to the middle as possible still with the first Rome here again planning your cuts out in advance you need to stagger your boards properly so when you have a post like this or a register that you're doing your cut in the center of a board you know not too far to the end because there just might not be enough meat at the end of this to keep the structural integrity years down the road so you want ideally to always cut in the center and make sure that the board is still going to be structurally strong for many years to come and that goes for posts that goes for registers almost every home installation will have to have some sort of cut in the install and you can plan that out before you start the job so when you're installing the floor you must use spacers okay you need to be able to give your floor engineered hardwood laminate bamboo or whatever floor you're installing particularly in a floating floor application you need to be away from any solid structure ie your wall you typically need to be 3/8 of an inch away but you could be 1/2 inch or 3/4 of an inch depending on the product you're installing look at your installation instructions but 3/8 of an inch is that is a good gauge so let's take a look in this installation they used a spacer here for these two boards that's great they're at 1/2 an inch away from the wall perfect over there they used another one but they didn't use it on every board so you can see already on this first row that it's getting too close to the N board this is one end of the of the application let's go take a look at the other end of the application they didn't use spacers there let's see what happened so down at this end we have all the rows have ended up fighting against the wall and when time comes that this products going to want to move it's not going to have anywhere to go so you're gonna have buckling pressure you're gonna eat the products going to move Wood wants to move and when it moves and has nowhere to go you have problems buckling bubbling and different problems like that so always use your spacers and against any solid structure a different installation methods you can do when installing a floor you can they could be a click together there could be a nail down or stapled down you can glue it down or you can glue the seams and float the floor so this particular installation was a floating floor seems glued installation the issue is they didn't strap the floor or they didn't put down painters tape or masking tape to hold sections of the floor together to let the glue to set so what ended up happening once they left is the board slowly started to pull apart then it's set and we have permanent gaps in the floor okay so we're almost at the end now so you're doing your installation a friend of I mentioned you know installing a floor is not like having a dinner party you can have a dinner party and you can leave the dishes to clean up the next day that's no big deal you can't do that when you're installing the floor you need to clean up as you go if glue or adhesives involved if it gets on the surface of your floor you need to clean it up on the spot you can't leave it for another day because it won't come off and it'll be it'll be a real pain to solve that okay so make sure you're cleaning as you go so that's us I love how-to videos this is turned into a how not to video and really this floor needs to be torn up and these boards are going to be thrown away this is an expensive lesson to learn okay so the reason we did this video the reason I really wanted to show you this is you as a customer and I don't want you to have the same expensive mistake we just don't we all you know it's it's it's expensive lessons to learn and hopefully you don't have to make some of these similar mistakes and have to throw some boards away so to recap just take your time plan out your project beforehand do your measurements do some dry runs you know make sure you have the right product make sure you have the right grade if there's color variation make sure your staggering those in advance different lengths of boards pull the best longest boards out and make sure you have a plan for the repair those are gonna show up in your room just go for flow you're looking for a beautiful nice flowing floor this is gonna transform your space and it's a great opportunity so - you know it's really you're not going to do this every day this is this is this is an opportunity for for really - to make your home you know a special place for you and your family and so just take that extra time up front to prepare have the right tools make the right cuts in advance use your spacers you know all these things that we've talked about in this video and please come to our website or give us a call and email us any questions you might have and always follow the installation instructions my name is Robert banks co-founder builddirect please have a great day

Channel: BuildDirect

Views: 1,098,368

Rating: 4.5096774 out of 5

Keywords: wood flooring installation, wood flooring, BuildDirect, flooring installation, hardwood floor, How-to (Media Genre), Renovation, DIY, HGTV

Id: qYTiY3yZ6LE

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Wed May 02 2012