Installing Our Hardwood Floors

When we purchased our home, the wood floors in the house (appeared to be oak with possibly a cherry colored stain) were in very bad shape.  There were gaps, cracks, gashes and the poly was literally chipping and peeling off in several places.

And, the kitchen had a floating laminate snap lock floor which was raised almost an inch higher and had large, high thresholds in both entrances from the rest of the house (think….tripping frequently over them walking into the kitchen….).  Originally, I wanted to pull up the floating kitchen floor, hope that there was original hardwood under there, and if not, install new hardwood in the kitchen and sand all the floors to be seamless.  We quickly found out after a few quotes that in order to do that, it would cost A LOT and likely wouldn’t be able to match up the floors between the kitchen and other rooms without pulling the subfloor and nearly everything out of the kitchen!  Then, there was the issue of leveling the hallway.  The hallway next to the stairs had a pretty bad slope, likely from over 100 years of settling.  

What made it worse is that where the floor boards had split at some point near the bottom of the stairs and there was a large filled area of putty stretching nearly the width of the hallway that was now chipping out. 

We were told that the floors had really been sanded down about as much as they could be and there would be no way to get that hump/slant out of the floor, and even if we could, the space would still be there that would need to be filled.

So, not in the original plan for the house, but we decided the best thing to do was to install all new flooring right over the existing floor (except the kitchen floating floor, that would have to come up and hope we could get as close to level as we could with the rest of the floor).

I decided I wanted a wide plank flooring, definitely wood, but preferably sustainable, durable and something that looked ‘aged’ to go with the 140 year old house.  After some online research and several samples from flooring stores, I decided on Cali Bamboo, the Treehouse color.  Cali Bamboo seemed to have the best durability rating and we ordered directly from them rather than going thru a retail store. They shipped it directly to our house (think semi truck on a fairly small street:)).  And, the Treehouse option was a distressed, hand scraped floor that I thought with two boys in the house would hide any wear and tear they unintentionally imposed over the years!  With color variations in each board, it matched well with the oak woodwork/columns in the dining room entrance and the darker stained wood along the staircase.

Now, I have installed hardwood floor before, but never bamboo, and never on an entire floor (usually just one room or area), so it took some planning to get everything to line up.  We knew we had a 5 day weekend coming up over the Thanksgiving holiday, so we decided that was the best time to make the most progress.  Of course, at the time, I thought we’d actually be able to get it all done over 5 days, but I guess I’m always more optimistic on timeframes than I should be:)

We had the floor delivered and per their guidelines, opened and cross-stacked every piece to acclimate to the house for well over a week before the planned install.

We had to use a large compressor and floor nailer (I did actually try to use a regular nail gun because the floor is actually less than an inch thick so I thought that would work….nope, real wood bamboo is SUPER strong and a regular nail gun won’t go thru – I later found out when installing trim that hammering in a finish nail doesn’t work either, the nail just bends over). 

We decided to start at the front door and work our way back through the house.  I figured at least that way if we ended up crooked or spaced, it would be in the back of the house and not the first thing people saw when they came in!  The next challenge came when determining how we were going to get into the dining room and living room that are on either side of the hallway near the front door.  I got to thinking ‘how are we going to nail the floor in backwards?’  I mean, you start in one area, and after one board is in, the floor nailer would fit to nail the boards, but even going straight across, that left several feet on the opposite side backing in to each room that somehow would need to be nailed in.  I’m glad we searched this topic before we started!  We watched a couple videos on ‘how to’ flip the direction of hardwood floor during install and found that you can buy (or make, which is what we did) a fake ‘tongue’ for your wood, glue that in so you basically have two grooves butting up against each other and then you can take off in both directions nailing!  This piece is called a spline (or, a slip tongue).

After we solved that problem, my next thought was ‘if we go from the hallway, run a row into the living room, how can we use a floor nailer because it will push the board back and we’ll end up with gaps and a crooked floor?’  Solution….lay the board in place and tap in the tongue to fit so you have a line running into the room, but before you nail, lay a good straight 2×4 down butted right up against it and screw it down to the floor in several places so you have a solid, straight support to nail against.  We actually had to move it down a few times until we got to the end of the room, but to think you can hold it, stand on it or anything else when the pressure of the floor nailer tacks in the brad is wishful thinking.  Even as strong as these floor boards are, they do give a little under pressure, so they will bend!  And, as we learned the hard way, when you have to take out a brad from bamboo, and, existing, who knows how old oak floor….it’s not fun and basically required cutting them off with a rotary tool!

Once you have a few rows nailed in, you can remove the 2×4 and glue in your spline to be able to flip and change directions.  We used liquid nails, just a small bead all the way down the groove of both boards we were installing (use too much and it will ooze out onto your floor…again, not a fun process to clean up and I do not recommend it).

The next problem we had to deal with was the hallway, for two reasons: first, there was the slope/dip from the base of the stairway down to our bedroom door, and second, I was really concerned about having to split the floor going from the dining room into the kitchen, then meeting up again at the doorway from the kitchen into the hallway.  After a lot of time and stress, measuring and debating, the reality was, there was just no way to know if it was going to match up exactly.  It measured close, but with the slope involved, I just couldn’t be sure.  The slope itself was a little easier fix.  While there was no way to get the floor ‘even’ with the rest of the house (without basically raising the entire floor to the point of cutting all baseboard, door trim, doors, etc.), we could get out the larger ‘hump’ and reduce the slope some. 

We used a combination of plywood, furring strips and shims starting at the worst part of the hump and working our way down the hall to reduce the slope.  In the end, it’s a 140 year old house and nothing is straight and level, so you just have to do the best you can and just learn to live with some things!

Now that all the issues had been addressed, the floating kitchen floor had been removed and we had built the new island, we were ready to actually install!

As I mentioned, we started at the front door and we used a regular chop saw to cut our boards to length (be prepared with one or two extra saw blades – we used fine tooth and the bamboo will eat them up pretty quick).  We used a jig saw and at times a circular saw to cut various parts for doorways, cutting the width against a wall, etc.

One useful trick we found early on is that marking a board with a regular pencil was useless.  Because of the darker color of the wood, you just couldn’t see it.  However, a red or pink color pencil worked great & wiped off pretty easily if needed!

Of course working our way around entryways, against walls and other areas of the house, we did have a few ‘oops’ cuts, but we had ordered the recommended 25% over just in case.  Luckily we didn’t have too many issues cutting and actually ended up having over 300 square feet left over in the end that we were able to sell on Facebook Marketplace (not at cost, but not a total loss either).

For the most part it was only my husband and I working on the install.  He did have a friend come over to help a few days, so having an extra set of hands was a huge plus.  If one person is pulling boards from the stack, one is nailing and one is cutting, things go a lot quicker.

Now, for the areas next to the wall or in tight spaces where the floor nailer didn’t fit, we used liquid nails in the tongue and groove just as we did with the splines.  To get a tight fit sometimes it meant using a scrap piece of wood and sometimes a pry bar to wedge the tongue into the groove.  For the most part, a rubber mallet and tapping the floor into place worked just fine.

Some areas were a little trickier, for example, where the floor in the hallway met up with the door to the bathroom.  Since we didn’t remove any of the baseboard or door trim (this house is so old, to remove all of that would’ve destroyed all the walls and we would never get it back the way it was), we had to fit a very thin (approximately 2 or 3 inches wide) piece under two sides of door trim and fit flush to the previous piece.  For areas like that, sometimes it’s necessary to trim the tongue, or the bottom of the groove to get pieces to slide in place just right.  Just make sure you use glue when you can’t nail. 

When we got close to the doorway from the kitchen to the hallway, we fit several boards in (some scrap just to hold place to see how close we actually were….SUCCESS!!  Somehow, we managed to get the floors to line up almost perfectly!  There is a tiny (less than a .25 inch) gap between two boards on one end of the kitchen/hallway doorway, but it’s against the cabinets and unless you know it’s there, you just don’t see it at all!  I guess I could put some sort of dark filler in it, but really, you don’t notice it unless you’re really looking for it.

Of course we didn’t actually finish the floor in the 5 days, but we got pretty close!  We had to finish a few hours at a time in the evenings and probably into the next weekend or so, but it’s done and I now have one seamless floor throughout the entire downstairs (except the bathroom of course)!  No more big humps!  No more oversized thresholds!  No more scratched, gouged floor!  And, no more floating floor in the kitchen! 

I love the color variations in this floor and the hand scraped, distressed look of it and how it just brings the whole first floor together!