How to Corner
Situation is very similar to fireplace case, but sometimes you’ll have make another snap line if the room opens around the corner. It depends on the rooms layout too. If you’ll understand the idea of cornering right and clear, then you have obtained useful skill, and installation will be a piece of cake. Another difficulty is starting and finishing the process. It’s about the same, and it contains the usage of the same skills, we used in the cornering. Finally you will make it to the last wall. At some point nail gun will become unusable, because there won’t be enough room for it. Use finish gun instead. In order to have the pieces sit tight together, take a regular screwdriver and push the boards together, while nailing it.
And the very last board (and the very first one, and the one from the fireplace) you can probably figure by yourself at this point of time. Cut it using table saw, put in its place, but don’t use a hammer to bring it down. Take another piece of wood, put it on top of the last board and gently (or not) hammer it down, then finish it with a gun. Congratulations! It’s done! Now, if it is a prefinished floor, you should be all set, if it’s unfinished, hire a professional company to sand it and cover it with the poly.
Tip: always wear the goggles while using a table saw! Otherwise it can be very dangerous.
Hardwood Floor Installation Process
In this section besides basic installation technique, you’ll learn a few useful tips, which will help you to complete your task right, and make your floors look nice.For the tools needed, see “Hardwood installation tools and equipment”.
First of all, you need to decide what type of hardwood floor you want to lay down, unfinished or prefinished. There’s not much of a difference in the method you will use for either of them, except for that when you’re dealing with prefinished floor, you will have to be much more careful.
If you’ll leave a scratch, groove or crack on the prefinished floor, you might not always be able to fix it for it to still look good. Some of it you can fix, by putting polyurethane over it for example, but sometimes problematic spot is beyond an easy repair and attracts unwanted attention. Thus, you have to make your way to victory carefully, step by step, without leaving any bad spots behind, otherwise you might have to do some repairs afterwards, which is never a pleasure to do. It takes time and effort, and can be avoided. Shall be. Unfinished flooring is much easier to deal with, considering the fact you can skip more or less bad spots while moving on, and take care of ‘em later relatively easy. Grooves, scratches, scuffs, nail holes, cracks, misplaced staples, broken pieces, all of that can be punched down, patched and/or glued. After that, when you’ll be done with sanding part (which is necessary for the unfinished floors), it won’t look bad but rather nice.
To be continued…