| Blog Cabin: Installing Hardwood Floors |
| For the master bedroom, the Blog Cabin crew installs cherry hardwood floors with a contrasting maple border. |
From "Blog Cabin"
episode DBLG-105 |
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The finished hardwood floor
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Lighter maple provides a visual complement to the dark cherry.
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In this installment of DIY's Blog Cabin, as work continues on the roof, Amy Devers — along with log cabin experts Chris and Simon Hodshon — work below to install the cherry hardwood floors, starting with the master bedroom which is already "under roof."In the process, the Blog Cabin team selects and adds a contrasting maple border, two boards in width, to offset the dark, rich tone of the cherry hardwood selected by DIY's bloggers. And to take the house exterior from looking like a construction site to a finished home, the team dons respirators and stains the white pine logs. They also attach rustic poplar-bark siding to the second story exterior. Following is a recap of the flooring phase of the Blog Cabin saga, followed by some tips and basics for installing the type of hardwood floor seen in this portion of the Blog Cabin's construction.
Flooring Selection- For the selection of wood for the flooring, DIY bloggers expressed a preference for something dark, rich and warm. The final choice for the floor: Aztec Cherry. The Blog Cabin team also picked out a lighter maple to create a contrasting border as a decorative touch (figures A and B).
Flooring StrategyFlooring began in the master bedroom where the roofing was already in place, so that the flooring would be adequately protected in case of rain. Felt paper goes down before the wood flooring to create a vapor barrier. Once the moisture barrier is put down, and the room is checked for square, the finish carpenter lays down first course of wood flooring (figure C).A pneumatic stapler, or flooring nailer, is used to secure the flooring planks. With a simple tap of a mallet on the trigger, compressed air shoots the staples into the floor, making this portion of the work a lot shorter than in the days of using only hammer and nails.
The pneumatic floor nailer...
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drives nails in with the tap of a mallet.
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Three courses of cherry were laid down around the room perimeter, followed by the two-course maple border inlay. To create the corner for an inlay, the choices are either to miter-cut the pieces that fit together at the corner or to create a basket-weave pattern (figure D) where the square-end pieces butt up against one another (figure E).
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Special techniques were required when it came to corner joints and the contrasting maple border.
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When cutting the individual boards to length, care was taken so that the joints in one course are offset from those in the adjacent course by at least six inches. When cutting the boards using the compound miter saw, the unfinished side of the board was positioned against the fence of the saw. This technique prevents visible scarring and gives each piece a look that's as good as a factory edge. After the boards are cut to a specific length, a router is used to create a groove in the newly cut edge.
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