Have you ever wondered how to install hardwood floor panels to make your home beautiful inside? There are many methods of installing hardwood Stain Concrete Designs currently in use. One of the best do it yourself hardwood floors is the floating hardwood floor. The term floating doesn’t refer to a floor that is sitting in liquid. Floating means that, while the floor is fastened to itself, it is not fastened down to the subsurface.
A floating hardwood floor has some disadvantages you should be aware of before proceeding with your installation. These floors will sometimes feel like you’re walking on a bubble. And, each bubble you step on will have a creaky sound. On the other hand, those bubbles give the floor a much softer feel than a well-fastened hardwood floor. And, the floating floor is much easier to maintain. Best of all, it is one of the cheapest types of hardwood floors to install.
Before continuing with the installation of a floating hardwood floor, we highly recommend that you consider using oak as your hardwood floor material. Oak looks beautiful and provides lasting durability.
Tools Needed to Install a Floating Hardwood Floor
Broom and Dust Pan – It is important to keep everything clean as you go. It is particularly important to keep the saw dust out from under and between your panels where it can really throw things off kilter. If it gets in there, there is no way to get it out without the very difficult process of hardware floor disassembly.
Carpenter’s Crayon – You’ll have to cut up your panels to make them fit in the corners and make them go around objects that cannot be removed from the room having the hardwood floor installed. You may also want to use your carpenter’s crayon to mark a layout pattern of where to place your flooring panels.
Circular Saw – Your saw is what you will use as you cut along the lines you drew with your carpenters crayon.
Claw hammer – In most places, you will use a rubber mallet to help push the boards together, but in those places near the wall where you don’t have enough room to swing the mallet, you can use the claw hammer to fit them together.
Cushioning Surface – You can make your floating hardwood floor feel even softer to the feet with the use of a cushioning surface under the floor. You would be shocked by the difference between a floor with the surface and a floor without the surface if you could try the two side by side.
Cutter Knife – The cutter knife comes in handy in more places than you would expect as you work on your floor. But the main reason we recommend this tool is so that you can make minor cuts on the panel ends when you just can’t quite make them fit together.
Glue – Floating hardwood floors aren’t supposed to be glued together. However, you might find you get better results if you just put a bit of glue at the end of each panel as you connect them. Of course, this will mean you’ll need to be very careful not to get any glue on your floor surface.
Nails – You will need to nail the floating floor to the wall strips. It may help to use a drill to do pilot holes to prevent the wood from splitting, but if you’re a gambler, you can just hammer these nails in without pilot holes. Most people do that anyways.
Rubber Mallet – The rubber mallet is what you use to fit the panels together at the joints. However, you need to be very careful not to hit the panels too hard and damage the panel surfaces.
Preparing to Install Floating Hardwood Floor Panels
Before you install your floating hardwood floor panels, you need to get your cushioning sheet installed. You can use your cutter knife to make it fit. Some people find that making it into many small pieces is much more manageable than trying to fit a large piece in the room. These pieces should be laid in the same direction as your panel rows.
One of the nice parts of using a cushioning sheet is that debris on the sheet or lumps in the surface below it have a less dramatic effect on the floor. However, you should still try to get all of these straightened out to the extent you can see them. For debris, just use your broom and dust pan to remove them. It’s not such a big of a one-time task when you consider the implications are pretty close to permanent if you fail to remove them.
