After my raging catastrophe with our engineered hardwood floors, Marc asked me if I wanted to talk about “real” hardwood floors on HomeFixated. While I’m certainly pro-hardwood floors, the truth is, is that I’ve never had to shop for or install them myself. This means that my ‘expertise’ on the matter is limited to walking and dancing (badly) on them and thinking certain varieties and stains are pretty. Not exactly helpful.
Thankfully, there are people out there who have a whole lot of hands-on knowledge when it come to selecting and installing hardwood flooring, so we’d like to point you their way for some great step-by-step instruction and information. Before you know it, you and your flooring nailer will be good friends (or mortal enemies).
Fred, (one of the One Project Closer team), has not only been slowly improving his home but also his community through his volunteer efforts with Habitat for Humanity. He’s a DIY’er like many HomeFixated readers and has been learning about and tackling home renovation projects for the past couple years, documenting the progress on the One Project Closer website (which you should definitely check out by the way).
In August, he posted a great article regarding tongue-and-groove Brazilian Walnut hardwood floors he installed over a wood subfloor. He goes into helpful detail about each of the steps involved and provides a load of pictures. I could describe what he does, but it’s just best to just take a look at it yourself:
If you’re like me and have concrete floors, you may want to check out information specific to that. The DIY Network has an article with video that shows how to install hardwood floors over concrete. While it’s admittedly not as detailed as what was documented over at One Project Closer, it at least gives you a sense of what’s involved and what you’ll need to get the job done.
And I’d be remiss (and possibly scolded) if I didn’t mention that our own Marc has done his fair share of hardwood flooring installations. He wrote two great articles that anyone thinking of tackling hardwood should read:
Top 10 Things I Learned Installing Hardwood Flooring
and
Top 10 Things I Learned Finishing My Own Hardwood Flooring
Read up, get inspired, and have at ‘er! If you have your own tips and experience installing hardwood floors, let us know in the comments below!
Woot! Woot! Thanks for the kind words!