Install a Beautiful, Affordable Wood Floor

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A solid wooden subfloor is the best starting point for ensuring that your wood flooring is firm and quiet underfoot. Subfloors help provide additional support, reduce sound transmission and make your floor more draft-proof. In certain situations, you can install wood floors on concrete slabs (see “Installing Wood on Concrete”) but fastening wood onto wood is simplest.

Nothing firms up a wooden subfloor better than a bunch of No. 8 deck screws driven 6 inches apart, extending 1 inch deep into the underlying floor joists. If your house already has a plywood subfloor fastened with nails only, add screws to firm up the boards and eliminate squeaks. If your subfloor is plank lumber, you’ll get the best results if you add half-inch-thick plywood on top to smooth out the joints.

You can use an electric drill to drive in floor screws, but if you have more than a few hundred square feet of subfloor to fasten down, consider renting a collated screw gun. The gun’s yard-long nose lets you work without straining your back by bending over. Strips of plastic-bound screws automatically feed into the gun tip one at a time. Every time you push the nosepiece of the tool against the subfloor with the motor running, you drive in another screw. Be sure you choose a screw length that drives through the underlying planks, subfloor and at least 1 inch into each joist.

Squeak-free Installation

Before you get started, be sure to get safety glasses, a dust mask and hearing protection ready. Begin laying out your floor with pine boards that lie true to the longest wall — this is important, because the first row of boards sets the position for all the boards that follow. To align the first row so it’s perfectly straight, start by using a taut string to mark a guideline, measuring a quarter inch away from the wall.

The traditional approach to installing solid wood flooring uses finishing nails only, driven at an angle through the tongue of each board. But this approach is problematic, because nails loosen over time and cause squeaky floors. To make wood flooring silent underfoot, you should first glue down each board using flexible carpenter’s glue from a squeeze bottle, then pound in some finishing nails. (You also can put down a layer of glue under your subfloor for added protection.) This combination allows the flooring to expand and contract seasonally, while remaining completely silent. Not all brands of wood glue remain flexible when dry. I usually use Weldbond glue, which works well, but you can test the glue you have by putting some on wax paper. Let it dry thoroughly and then peel off the glue. If you can bend the glue without breaking it, the glue is flexible enough to use for your floor.

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