In this project tutorial I’ll walk you through how I installed the hardwood floor in my son’s bedroom and show you all the considerations and planning that needs to be done in order to do a DIY hardwood floor install. In this case, we settled on a dark distressed bamboo hardwood. A common complaint with bamboo hardwood floors is that while they’re really resilient to dings and scratches once they’re installed, the tongues on them can be really brittle so installing them typically requires gluing them down rather than nailing them down which can be a little messy and challenging.

Fortunately, Powernail sent me their new Model 2000F 20GA. hardwood floor nailer to test out which they claim is specifically designed to install brittle tongued flooring. This nailer is much smaller than a traditional hardwood flooring nailer and doesn’t require a mallet to hit the nail gun and shoot the nails.

Things to Consider Before Buying Your Flooring

1. Determining Square Footage:

Before you get started installing any hardwood or laminate flooring, you’ll first want to measure the room you’re going to be installing the flooring into and then checking the flooring you’re going to install to see what the square footage coverage is per box. Measure the length and width of the room and multiply them together. I recommend you purchase 10-15% more flooring than you need to account for cuts and waste.

2. Measure the Flooring in Adjoining Rooms

Also, keep in mind the flooring in the adjoining rooms. You always want to try and choose a floor that is roughly the same thickness as whatever is around it so you don’t have a bunch of different height floors to try and dress up later. In my case, after removing the carpet I could get away with a hardwood that was 9/16” thick to keep an even height with the hallway. You don’t want to choose a floor that’s too thick or too thin that you have to try and come up with a fix for later.

Purchase Your Flooring and Acclimate it to Your Home

Once you have your flooring, bring it into the house or the area it’s going to be installed and let it acclimate to the climate in the room for a few days. The humidity of your home can affect the flooring so you never want to install it the same day you purchase it.  

Preparing the Subfloor & Remove Baseboards

Next you need to prepare the subfloor that the hardwood is being installed over. In this case I removed some old carpet and found old tongue and groove subfloor underneath. Check the floor to make sure it’s nice and level and do any necessary work level the subfloor if you have to.Go around and knock down any old nail heads, or remove any staples or things sticking up from the floor, and then thoroughly clean the area with a shop vac.

Also, remove any existing baseboard moldings in the room. In this case the baseboards are old built in baseboards that are plastered in with the walls which I won’t remove because it would damage the walls so I’ll custom make some new baseboards to go over them later.

Laying Out Your Flooring

Next you want to determine the layout of the flooring in the space. I like to start by finding the longest straight run in the room, (or work off the center of the room if it’s relatively square). Working my way off that point, I lay out some pieces or measure the width of my finish boards to determine where they’ll line up. I do this to make sure that I won’t have any sliver cuts or funky shaped pieces to deal with during installation.

Keep in mind that many old homes have walls that are out of square so adjust your measurements accordingly. If you find you’ll have an awkward cut piece, adjust where your pieces will line up so you don’t have any really thin pieces are the end to deal with. Also try and determine what layout will

allow you to cut the fewest pieces. Make sure you plan to stagger each joint by at least 6” and avoid H joints where 2 rows line up that aren’t at least 2 rows apart.

Underlayment

Once you have your layout roughly figured out, next install a vapor barrier on the floor. Red Rosin paper is a cheap product that’s been around forever, but they also make a ton of other products for this. Lay it out in the room and overlap it by 4-6” with every row.

Installing the Flooring

Now you’re ready to start installing your flooring. On your first rows, you may need to face nail the rows in place with a finish nailer to hold them in place. Make sure you leave an expansion gap around the edges of the flooring at each wall. This allows for the flooring to expand and contract with changes in season and humidity. Follow any markings you laid out on the floor during the layout phase to make sure you’re laying the flooring correctly.

Once you have the first few rows installed, you can use the flooring nailer from here on out. I like to use a small piece of the actual flooring as a tap block to make sure the pieces are firmly seated in their grooves before shooting them in place. They sell tap blocks and bars but I find using the actual floor works better and doesn’t slip as much so there’s less chance of damaging the edges of the flooring. When nailed, this flooring recommends being fastened every 4-6” so I’m working my way down each piece.

Alternate Pieces from Different Boxes of Flooring

Colors can vary from box to box so as you work your way through the room, make sure you’re taking pieces from various boxes of flooring as you go. You never want to do half your room and then find out that the next box is a slightly different shade.

Door Jambs

When you get to door jambs, use a piece of flooring to act as a depth gauge to cut off the bottom of the casings at the height of the new flooring and then slide the new flooring underneath. Don’t try to cut the flooring around them because it looks terrible. Also, extend the flooring into the center of the jambs and then later you can go back and install a transition or threshold piece to blend the floors from various rooms together.

Face Nail the Final Row

Work your way through the entire room and when you get to the final row, face nail it in place as close to the wall as you can. You can patch any face nail holes with matching wood putty, or cover them with the baseboard or shoe moulding that you choose. A finish nail shouldn’t be noticeable in the flooring. 

Install Floor Transitions or Thresholds

Lastly install any transition or threshold pieces. These may be additional items you need to purchase as part of your flooring order. Talk to your hardwood flooring retailer and let them know what types of transitions you need. Now you can install whatever baseboard or shoe moulding you choose and you are finished with this project!

Finished!

I hope this tutorial was helpful in teaching you how to install hardwood floors. It can be a little tricky, but I’m confident you can do it on your own and get great results like I did. If you liked this project, here are a few other home improvement projects you might enjoy! 

How to Install Laminate Flooring 

Tile Like a Pro

It’s been pretty cold in my shop of late so this week I’m showing you how I plan to keep the shop warm by installing an electric garage heater! This requires the installation of a 220v circuit so I’ll show you all the steps to install a dedicated 220v circuit to run this heater. Watch the video for step-by-step instruction and  make sure to stick around for a 20% Discount code on the purchase an electric garage heater from New Air. Please note that working with 220v power can be dangerous. If at any time you are not 100% comfortable installing this heater or cannot perform the steps safely, contact an electrician to run the necessary power supply for you. 

Follow along with all the tools and materials you’ll need to tackle this project.(affiliates) http://bit.ly/InstallingAGarageHeater

Disclosure: This post contains an unpaid product integration by New Air. All views and opinions herein are my own.

1. Turn the Power Off at the Breaker

First and foremost when working with electrical, you should always turn the power off at the breaker panel for the area you are working. In this case I am working in the main panel so I shut off the power to the house. You’ll also need to verify that you have existing space in the panel available to install a new 220v dual pole breaker.

2. Run Conduit to the Panel

In my case, I was able to drill a hole through the wall from the panel to the workshop since they shared a wall. Depending on the location of the panel and your access to it, you may need to open up a section of the wall around the panel or connect conduit along the outside of the building. Each home is different so understanding your home is important in determining how you are able to run the conduit. If you are working inside the wall, you can use Romex cabling instead of conduit but any electrical that is run on the outside of a wall needs to be encased in conduit of some kind.

I’m using 1/2″ EMT conduit along with a combination of fittings, elbows, and connections which you can find in the electrical aisle of the hardware store. Use a pipe cutter to cut the conduit to the required lengths. You’ll need to find a location in your garage to hang the heater that is out of the way of garage doors, or overhanging obstructions. You’ll also want to make sure that the heater doesn’t directly vent squarely onto a wall or surface that is susceptible to heat to minimize the risk of fire.

In my case, I am running the conduit up the wall and onto the ceiling so that I can hang the heater near the center of my shop but away from the garage door. I’m using 4″ junction boxes to provide easily accessible areas where I can access the wiring should I need to make any changes or adjustments down the road.

3. Running the Wiring

For this project I am using 10 Gauge stranded wire in Red, Black and Green. The Red and Black wires will be the alternate phase hot wires and the Green wire is the ground wire. Because this is a 220v circuit, a white neutral wire is not required.

To install the wiring to the breaker panel, I feed the 3 wires out through the conduit into the panel and then connect the Green ground wire to the ground bar in the panel and the Red and Black wires to the terminal screws on the breaker. This is a 30 amp breaker because the average draw of the heater is 21 amps.

Using a fish tape, I feed it down from the ceiling junction box to the lower junction box and then attach the wiring by bending it around the fish tape and securing it with electrical tape. Using a extra piece of conduit to mount the spools of wire onto allows the spools to free spool as you pull the wires back up through the conduit with the fish tape. In addition to connecting the ground wires to each other and wiring to the breaker ground bar, each junction box will need to have a grounding pigtail attached to it to ground the junction box.

4. Hanging the Heater

Installing the heater in place is a relatively simple task compared to the rest of the project. Choose the location of the bracket and mount it to the ceiling or wall as needed. In my case I located a stud in the ceiling and mounted the bracket in place by pre-drilling and securing it in place with a couple of lag bolts. Once the bracket is installed, mounting the heater is just a matter of using the included carriage bolt and spacer to hang the heater from the bracket and then securing it in place with the included nut.

5. Connecting the Wiring

To connect the wiring from the heater to the junction box in the ceiling I am using a flexible appliance whip that I picked up at the local hardware store. Run the wiring through the hose and then  connect it to the junction box and the heater using the included attachments. The wiring of the heater itself doesn’t match the color scheme of the wiring I am running but the white and black wires are the hot wires, and the yellow wire with the green stripe is the ground wire. Connect the wiring using some wire nuts and then close up the heater. Lastly connect all the wiring in the junction boxes by connecting like colored wiring with wire nuts and putting cover plates on the junction boxes.

6. Turning Power on and Testing Heater

Lastly turn the power back on at the breaker and turn on the heater. Within about 2 minutes of the heater being on my shop had warmed up substantially. It has an adjustable temperature control knob so you can turn it on low if you only need a little bit of heat or you can crank it up to high and really pump out a lot of heat.

Having a heater in my shop is not something I’ll use all the time, but it is going to be a really nice thing to have when I do need it. I hope this video and post were helpful to you in showing what is involved in running your own electric garage heater.

If you’d like to purchase your own New Air electric garage heater, you can use the Discount Code “MRFIXIT” here and get 20% Off your order.

If you enjoyed this project, check out some of my other workshop projects:

DIY Bath Walnut Caddy

DIY Cheese Cutting Board

Thanks so much for watching and good luck!