How to Install Floating Wood Flooring Over Concrete. Manufactured wood flooring provides an efficient and attractive surface while also adding insulation and reducing. Installing a hardwood floor over a concrete slab. Even if your home was built on a concrete slab, you can still enjoy the beauty and charm of hardwood floors. 'Floating' wood floors over concrete Suggestions for installing a solid wood, 'floating' floor over concrete. June 6, 2001. Radiant Heat under Wood Floor Products Installing Hardwood Floors Over Radiant Heat Radiant Floor Heating. Engineered wood flooring offers the timeless look of hardwood, but is perfect for basements and other areas where moisture can be an issue. Follow these steps to.
Installing Laminate/Engineered wood Floating Floors « Home Improvement Stack Exchange Blog. Recently my wife and I, being sick of Lego all over our living room, decided that it was time to finish our basement. I considered doing it myself, but really didn’t have the time, or the vehicle to haul materials in. We decided to hire a contractor (and got very lucky with a personal recommendation) to provide us with ready- to- paint drywall, and to come back later for trim and drop ceiling. After installing the drywall and rough- ins, the contractor went off to Bahamas for a week’s pre- arranged vacation (with my deposit I presume), leaving me to install the flooring. I was left with a painted concrete floor (2.
Learn how to install a floating. Install a Laminate Floor. If you are installing laminate flooring over a concrete subfloor. . Brian Boyle of House Building Answers shows you how to install wood flooring over a concrete. How to Install a Hardwood Floating Floor. How to Install a Floating Engineered Wood. The quickest way to get new wood underfoot is to install a floating floor. over virtually any material—concrete.
Before he left, She Who Makes the Design Decisions and I went shopping for the flooring materials. Our options: Hardwood.
Hardwood Flooring is a very attractive and durable solution. Typically, a board is 3/4″ thick, and comes in random lengths from 1. It’s a tongue and groove board, which needs to be nailed down to the sub- floor at an angle through the tongue. A special nailing tool is used to do this. However, we’re over concrete in this installation, and don’t want to go through the cost and effort of laying a 3/4″ plywood sub- floor or, more properly, dricore. So hardwood is out of the picture.
Engineered Wood. There are two basic types of engineered wood. Nail/Glue down, which is simply three plies of wood, staggered to make a tongue and groove shape like hardwood, and a final finish layer of actual hardwood.
This is installed like hardwood, or it can be glued along the tongues to make a floating floor. Alternatively, there is click- lock flooring, (pictured above) which requires no glue or nails. Typically, the base layers will be plywood or HDF (High Density Fibreboard – Think sawdust and glue pressed into a board), with a 3/1. This stuff is relatively easy to install, and slightly cheaper than hardwood. This is the product we were originally looking at. Engineered wood typically comes in random lengths. Laminate. Laminate is essentially the same as Engineered, except instead of glued hardwood top layer, there is a printed surface covered in melamine.
This means that a good quality laminate can be more durable than any natural wood product. Laminates that have a melamine bottom layer are also less susceptible to moisture, which makes them perfect for a basement.
Furthermore, they tend to be significantly cheaper than both engineered wood and hardwood — Which is a major consideration in a basement, where there is the remote, but real, possibility of flooding resulting in a complete replacement of the flooring. Shirlock Homes makes a case against laminate here.
There is a lot of merit to what he says. Laminate cannot be re- finished, and cheap laminate tends to wear our quickly, leaving you with bare HDF. Notwithstanding his expert advice, I do believe it is the correct, economical choice for a basement. Just make sure the Skil- Saw blade has stopped spinning before you put it down.
Laminates come rated AC- 1 to AC- 5, with 5 being the highest quality. Rating. Usage. AC- 1. Bedrooms. AC- 2. Living/Dining Rooms, Kid’s Rooms. AC- 3. Hallway, Living Room, Office (rolling chairs!)AC- 4. Office, Cafe, low- traffic retail.
I like installing hardwood flooring on concrete around curved stair case. What kind of wood flooring? Any kind of hardwood flooring and of course, laminate. Installing Laminate Flooring Over Concrete. Love the look of hardwood flooring but hate the high prices? Consider using laminate flooring instead. Laminate can.
AC- 5. High traffic public areas – Retail, Banks, large offices. The product we ended up purchasing was AMAZONE Canadian Maple, by KRONOTEX. This is an AC- 4 rated product, which means it should be more than sufficient for our basement. This product comes in fixed lengths. Preparation. Now that we’ve selected our product, and loaded it into the job site it’s time get the prep work done.
Ensure the floor is level, and flat. If it isn’t, you have to decide whether you want to grind down any lumps, level the floor with Self Leveling Compound, or live with some imperfection. Our floor had some variation, and we probably should have leveled it, but the cost was prohibitive. We decided to accept the imperfection. Remove baseboards, and undercut door trim.
Not required in this installation, as it hadn’t been installed). Clean the floor – This is critical. You don’t want any lumps of mud or any organic material on the concrete – this is food for mold!
Stack your material on the wall you are going to finish LAST. Leave it there for a few days to acclimatize to the moisture level of your room. Lay the underlay. Some say that the underlay should run perpendicular to the flooring. However, this means that you have to do all the underlay in one go, and keep it clean while you work (an impossible task!). Since it comes in 3′ widths, I prefer to run it the length of the room, lay the flooring on top, and lay the next section when I get near the edge.
The Installation. Tools. Mitre Saw - for cutting boards to length. Table Saw – for ripping your final boards to the appropriate width.
Carpenter’s Pencils. You’ll need one at each saw, one behind your ear, and one left on the floor near the end of the run. Beware of inferior pencils. Only the official diy pencil will work. Measuring tape – one in the work area, and one by the table saw. Undercut saw – for cutting under door trim (if necessary)Broom and Dustpan.
Shop Vac. Jigsaw. Since the end of each run will require a cut, I prefer to chop my boards in the work space. This necessitates lots of cleaning and vacuuming, but saves many trips up and down the stairs. The table saw can be set up in any convenient location out of the work area, such as a nearby garage.
STOP! There’s one last bit of thinking! One thing we need to avoid is a skinny little space left over after our final run. Since my boards were nominally 3 inches wide, I need to know how much space will be left over for my final course. Ideally, I’d love it if the final board just clicked into place leaving me a 1/4 inch of space to be covered by the skirting. THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN!
The reality is that you need to rip (length cut) the final course to make it fit. We could just blindly plunge ahead and deal with that issue at the end. But, we could end up with a 3/4″ space, which will just look awful.
We need to estimate this gap before we begin. Measure the room width as accurately as possible. You want to find a maximum and minimum width, to the 1.
See http: //diy. blogoverflow. BMitch’s excellent post on measuring. Subtract 1/2 an inch (you need 1/4 inch gap on either side)(I ended up with 1.
Snap 3 or 4 boards together, and measure the width to the nearest 1. Divide by 3 (or 4) to get the board width (3 1/1. Convert everything to 1. Room =(1. 5 x. 12 + 2) x 1. Board = 3×1. 6 + 1 = 4. Divide the Room width by the board width 2.
Subtract the integer part, and multiply by the board width (. This is more than half a board, so I’m good. In the event that you end up with less than a half board (lets say 1. Before we get started, lets define some terminology.
Unlike hardwood, you lead with the groove, and snap the tongue of the next board into it. This picture explains what I mean: Let’s go! Take a piece of flooring (ripped if necessary), and lay it in a corner, over your underlay, parallel to the longest wall. Remember to leave a 1/4 gap around the walls.
The trailing edge, and the trailing end go up against the walls. It will move, so don’t worry. Continue down the wall, butting the next board to the one before, and the trailing edge should click into the leading edge of the previous board. This is going to move, so again don’t worry. When you get to the end, your piece of wood will be too long. If you have random lengths, pick one that is significantly longer), it’s time to make our first chop.
Interlude: Cutting Boards to Length. We need to cut a board to fit the remaining space AND leave a quarter inch gap. We could mess around with measuring and calculating, but I’ve figured out a better way. Lay the board upside down trailing edge (the edge you want to keep!) butted tight to the wall over the last board you installed.: Using your diy. This gives us the full length – we still need to remove 1/4 inch)Lay the mark on the board right on the edge of the slot of your mitre saw and cut. This should be close enough to 1/4 short of what we marked. As long as the skirting/quarter round covers the gap, we’re good.).
Carrying on…Slip the piece marked KEEP into the end of the row. The piece marked waste, if really short can be thrown out. But! hopefully it’s pretty long, and we can use it to start the next row. If you have random lengths, pick your end piece to leave enough for the next row. The next row is probably the most difficult. You need to slip the trailing edge of the current row into the leading edge of the previous while making sure the butt joins of the first row are perfectly aligned. If the board doesn’t slip in easily and click into place, your butt joins are misaligned OR there’s crud in the groove. I find that the corner of the trailing edge and end grooves often gets a bit munged up. It’s easy enough to remove any imperfections with your fingers, or a utility knife. Carry on with the second row, making an end cut when necessary. Now that everything is locked together, the third row is much easier. Notice however, that the floor is still moving. Don’t worry about it until you have 4 or 5 rows down. Then the floor should be heavy enough to hold itself in place. Just remember to check the 1/4 inch gap against the starting wall every once and a while, and slide the laid flooring around to correct it. Once you’ve got halfway, move your material from the finishing wall to a convenient location on the completed portion of the floor. This will help hold it down, and get the material out of your way.
Hopefully, you can continue on until the last course, laying a new row of underlay as required, rip a few boards at the end, and slip out for a beer. Not Bloody Likely!) What’s likely to happen is you run into something like this: or into a closet door, a run- out to a stairwell or some other obstacle. You’re going to have to cut. Dealing with obstructions.
You have two choices here.