Install a Beautiful, Affordable Wood Floor

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Installing the first row

When it’s time to lay down the first row of pine wood, choose your longest, straightest boards, line them parallel to the longest wall of the room using the marks that you made with the taut string and apply squiggles of glue to their bottom surfaces. Put a board in place. Now drive finishing nails through the pine wood and into the subfloor about one-half inch from the wall — be sure to get close enough to the wall that the baseboard and trim will cover the nail heads later. Complete the anchoring job by driving 11/2 inch finishing nails through the tongue of the board at a 45 degree angle.

Even if you have a flooring nailer, drive these first nails into the tongue by hand, using a nail set to sink the heads below the wood surface. Flooring nailers are designed to drive floorboards sideways as they sink nails. The sideways action tightens board-to-board gaps nicely, but can knock the first row of floorboards out of alignment. It’s best to wait until you have a few boards anchored by hand before you reach for the flooring nailer. As you continue, cut and install subsequent rows of floorboards so their joints don’t align with previous board-to-board joints.

Sanding and Finishing

If the area of your pine floor is small, you can smooth the floor using nothing more than a hand-held belt sander. You’ll have best results if you first sand perpendicular to the direction of the grain using an 80 grit belt on the machine. This will create surface scratches, but these can be easily removed later. Sanding across the grain like this is the fastest way to achieve a level surface. After the board-to-board joints become level, sand parallel to the grain with the same 80 grit belt. Complete the sanding job with a 120 grit disk in a random orbit sander.

The best way to illuminate the floor surface and highlight areas that need more sanding is with a 500 watt halogen light placed at floor level. A shop vac is invaluable to clean the floor before finishing — just make sure to use a soft bristle floor attachment. The hard, plastic floor wand of the shop vac can leave marks on your light, newly sanded softwood floor.

Several finishing options are available for pine floors: tung oil, varnish and stains. Be aware that dark stains will accentuate the inevitable dents on a pine floor, because the underlying lightly colored wood shows up prominently when the finish is damaged or worn away. Consider leaving pine wood unstained or only lightly stained before coating it with a clear coat of polyurethane or oil. If you opt for a darkly colored softwood floor, keep a jar of stain handy to touch up areas that become damaged and show through as a light color. Rubbing some stain into the damaged zone gives it an antique, burnished appearance as the area gathers stain and gets slightly darker than the surrounding wood.

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