How to Orient Wood Flooring
- 1). Use your hammer and pry bar to remove all floor trim from the room.
- 2). Study the floor to determine which direction the floor joists underneath are running. If you're working with a bare subfloor, the nail patterns should indicate the direction of the joists. If not, inspect it visually from below, if possible. Orient your flooring layout along a wall that runs perpendicular to the joists. (Note: If it's impossible to inspect the joists, then start at the longest wall in the room.)
- 3). Lay flooring paper on the floor alongside your starting wall (perpendicular to the joists, or along the longest wall in the room). Staple it down with a staple gun. Cover the rest of the floor in slightly overlapping rows.
- 4). Hold a chalk snap line 1/2 inch from the starting wall, and snap the line. Do the same on the opposite wall. Measure between the two chalk lines, at either end of the room, to see if there's any variation from one side of the room to the other. If so, adjust the lines so they are a consistent distance from each other at all points.
- 5). Take your adjusted measurement from between the two chalk lines, and divide it by the width of the floorboards you're using, to determine how many courses will fit. If the two chalk lines are 125 inches apart, and the floor boards are 3 inches across, you'll be able to fit 41 boards, with 2 inches left over.
- 6). Get the width of your starting and ending rows by adding the leftover space to the width of a board (2 inches of space plus 3 inches for the width of a board equals 5 inches), and divide in half (2 1/2 inches).
- 7). Cut your first course of boards lengthwise on a table saw to the starting width (2 1/2 inches in this example). Cut off the grooved side of the boards.
- 8). Install the boards along the chalk line by your starting wall, with the cut side facing the wall. (The 1/2-inch space will let the boards expand with climate changes.) Shoot nails through the surface of the boards in pairs, every foot. Use a miter saw to cut the end of the last board so it fits against the perpendicular wall. Lay three or four courses this way.
- 9). Set up your pneumatic floor stapler. Set it on the installed boards, with the nose hanging down over the edge of the next row of flooring. Shoot the staples in through the sides of the boards at a downward angle, about every foot. Lay courses of flooring all across the floor with your pneumatic floor stapler until you're too close to the opposite wall to use it.
- 10
Lay the last few courses with your nail gun. Cut the final course to the same width as your starting course (2 1/2 inches in the example). Cut off the tongue side, and set it along the chalk line so there's a 1/2-inch gap by the wall. (The gap will be covered by floor trim.)
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