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DIY Hardwood Flooring: Tales from the Frontlines

I’ve had a few questions about our floors, so I’m going to answer them all here and in a follow-up post, plus some lessons learned from two survivors who knew exactly nothing about hardwood floor installation before undertaking this giant project.
DIY glue-down engineered hardwood floors, south american walnut
You’ve probably seen a few episodes of some HGTV show in which hardwood floors are installed with a nailgun, by a carpenter who may have paused once to wipe a small bead of sweat off his forehead, then finished the job in a total of about 13 minutes.

So you know exactly what it’s NOT like to actually install hardwood floors.
carpenter clipart
“I just installed 1200 square feet of hardwood floors, and it’s not yet time for lunch!”
At least, not if you’re installing them on a slab (meaning, your house sits on a giant block of cement with no basement or crawlspace underneath).

The first step to installing hardwood floors is to evaluate what you can install in your space. 

If your house is on a slab, you have two installation options:

  1. Floating Floors: These are installed over your subfloor, but not actually nailed or glued directly to the floor – they “float above.”
  2. Glue-down Floors: Obviously, these are glued to the slab or subfloor.

We decided not to go with the floating floor option because when you walk on them, there can be a hollow, empty sound that makes them a little louder than glue-down floors.

So, glue-down it was!

See how happy and easy that sounds? Lies!

If you’re gluing down, you have narrowed down your options to engineered flooring only. Unlike solid hardwood floors, which are, um, solid hardwood, engineered hardwoods have several layers to them that give them stability and allow them to expand and contract, making them more like your easygoing, trustworthy boyfriend, and not like that boyfriend you had for a short time because you inexplicably had a major crush on him but couldn’t bring anywhere in public because he was unstable or had a unibrow.

(This just got weird. I’m sorry.)

Engineered hardwood flooring, hardwoods, walnut, south american
source

And this has all gotten much more technical than I ever wanted already. Let’s get back to the fun stuff: choosing your hardwoods.
I have a history of being a horrible decision-maker who instantly regrets my most expensive decisions. (See: my kitchen. My dining room. My paint color choices.) But I knew – in the depths of my soul – that dark, warm hardwood floors and I were meant to be joined together for all time and never tire of each other and never lose *the passion.*

 
Dark hardwoods, be my valentine.

So Andy and I set off on a grand shopping adventure with our three main requirements in mind:
1. Dark color
2. Engineered wood
3. Costs less than, say, our mortgage. Or our firstborn.
We went to several flooring dealers and found most of our choices to be in the $4-6 per square foot range… until we saw “the one.”
It was in a Home Depot Clearance Center near our house, for something like $2 per square foot. It was dark, South American Walnut, and it was all: “Kelllllllllllllllllly. I’m everything you’ve ever wanted in a floor. I’m smooth, dark, handsome, latin. Te amo.”
And I was sold.
(Spoiler alert: it’s been a rocky romance, but more about that, and about the actual installation process, to come…)Has anyone else gone through this floor selection process? Any regrets about your choice? How’s the passion in your [flooring] romance?

UPDATE: See part 2 and part 3 on DIY hardwood floors


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9 Comments

Comments

  1. rindercella @ neatheringourfest says:
    January 21, 2011 at 11:39 am

    I too love long, dark and handsome, shiny alluring wood floors… I can't wait to see the next post! :)

    Reply
  2. Live, Laugh, Love, Recycle says:
    January 21, 2011 at 12:51 pm

    Thanks for the comment on my salad post :-) I love cookies. But I actually went back for seconds on both those salads and chose them over whatever else we were eating.

    Your floors look great! We did floating floor laminate and tile in our last house, and it took about six months each time I did a room to get my courage up to move on to the next room. I can't wait for the next floor post :-) Barbara

    Reply
  3. Erin @ My Rented House says:
    January 21, 2011 at 6:17 pm

    Dark floors are the way to go…we can't wait to refinish the ones in our almost-ours house (right now they're orangey red).

    And thank you for your kind comments on my blog–we can certainly be BFF members of the "I am or know someone who is a teacher of unpredictable and hormonally challenged 15 year-olds" club :)

    Reply
  4. Jennis says:
    September 26, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    Surprisingly well-written and ionfrmaitve for a free online article.

    Reply
  5. Dorie says:
    May 9, 2013 at 8:51 am

    Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in
    it or something. I think that you could do with a few pics
    to drive the message home a bit, but other than that, this is
    magnificent blog. A great read. I will certainly be back.

    Reply

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