help plse-laying reclaimed hardwood flooring

[BREAKALEG]

You will be able to tell if the walls are built on top of the original boards by a simple bit of detective work - which way the boards run and wether they stop short of the wall for a start.
I'm fairly sure most floors layed are layed over the existing subfloor with new skirts and undercutting the door frames - it helps if you lay the new boards in the opposite direction to the original boards.

Portanailers are very popular, simple to use and reliable when you get near the edges and theres no room to swing the hammer drill pilot holes and hammer by hand at an angle through the tounge and when thats not possible pilot and top fix again using a single portanail.

A jigsaw and portanailer are the main tools you will need although a chopsaw will speed things up.

If you lay on the joists you will have more cuts/waste and will also lose the tounge and groove joint on the ends i would put plenty of pva wood glue under the butt joints else the may squeek move etc.

Glueing the tounge and grooves is not required if you are porta nailing.

 

[matt1098]

Symptoms/Break a leg- Thanks again for your input, really useful.

I will definitely get one of those meters as having spent close on a grand on the reclaimed strip it would be madness to not spend an extra £20, especially as I dont know where the wood has been over the last few months. Thanks for that as like you say cupping etc would be a disaster after all the hard work to come

Symptons- Id love an air jobbie but in these economic climes bla bla I will probably stick with a porta (still £200).

One question Ive forgot to ask- I presume it is only one nail per joist, secret nailed as you go along (most lengths I have are approx 4-6 ft)?

I also wonder whether anyone could give some advice re sanding the floors. I have done it before in a couple of houses but always on cheaper pine boards. I have always not managed to avoid a bit of waving/dipping, particularly at the point where you go from fwds with a belt sander to dragging it backwards. Im sure the prob has been my laziness in not lifting the belt up, but rather jerking it back whilst still down, but now that Im putting down floor that I have to get right Im worried Im going to cock it up. I guess its just a case of doing it slowly, "working throught the grits" and using the edging sander with each grit change rather than leaving the edging till the end, but stil...
Any other tips would be very gratfeully received.

Since I last hired sanders I see that hire shops now do a German 3 orbital sander combo machine: a yellow green thing called "a trio fine finisher." Could this be the answer to my probs re taking a mill off and getting it perfectly flat. Anyone used one of these? Are they worth hiring?

 

[WoodYouLike]

Trio sanders are mostly used for the last sanding (of you start with grit 40 underneath the Trio it will propel you right across the floor!)

See here for more info and tips on sanding 'renovation' floors

 

[Bondai]

Just out of interest...
and it might sound noobish but there is one thing I dont understand.

Can someone tell me why would you want to sand a reclaimed oak floor ?

I can see the point if boards are in such a bad state but if you bought the reclaimed oak and probably top dollar for them then surely you would have bought them because of the old patena, the character and the older look they have otherwise you can buy a new oak floor for half the price of reclaimed.

If you sand them with a pro sander (drum / belt) surely all the original patena is going to be taken away and you will be left with reclaimed boards that look like brand new boards ? I don't see the point.

 

[WoodYouLike]

Agree. However in many cases with reclaimed floors there will be large damages and/or stains etc. Height differences between the various boards are also possible (specially when 'reclaimed' from several sources/places) which could be considered to make the whole floor too uneven.

 

[matt1098]

Noobish
No offence taken- The wood has had carpet tiles on it, has been varnished at some point and will probably vary in height slightly. I think that even with sanding and wax-oiling it will still look like an old oak strip floor. Thats what I want. No one will ever mistake it for an engineered floor IMHO

 

[WoodYouLike]

No one will ever mistake it for an engineered floor IMHO

Then I won't tell you how much some of our clients are willing to purchase a quality Aged & Destressed wood-engineered floor because it so looks like the real old thing (Honestly!) (6mm Solid Oak top layer of course, not the run-of-the-mill aged & destressed wood-engineered)

 

[matt1098]

Doesn't it just look like a old engineered floor- Im confused

 

[WoodYouLike]

No. What do you see when you look down a floor (installed floor that is)?
The wood surface.

So a wood-engineered floor (with solid top layer of 6mm) looks like a solid wood floor. You don't see the difference.

 

[Bondai]

Noobish
No offence taken- The wood has had carpet tiles on it, has been varnished at some point and will probably vary in height slightly. I think that even with sanding and wax-oiling it will still look like an old oak strip floor. Thats what I want. No one will ever mistake it for an engineered floor IMHO

With an industrial sander you are going to take the whole old face off the oak boards surely ?

My point was if you were going to sand the reclaimed oak right down then I didn't see the point in buying reclaimed in the 1st place (you could have bought solid oak but not reclaimed) and wandered if there is a special way of sanding them down and still maintain their character because I would thought this impossible with drum/belt sanding.

 

[BREAKALEG]

Sand diagonaly across the boards both ways and then in line lowering the drum gently, blend the edges into the floor using two grits, try an 80 grit as 60 is alot coarser and can do more damage in the hands of the ameteur sander.
Corners and under rads etc you will need a scraper (BnQ sell a harris scraper) *not the type for stripping wallpaper* and a bit of elbow grease with a folded peice of sand paper.

Lastly enjoy yourself it will look fantastic and alot of it will be covered by furniture anyways

 

[Symptoms]

matt - if your reclaimed stuff has been sourced from different locations and so the thicknesses are wildly different consider running them through a thicknesser machine (remove any old cleat stubbs 'cos they'll damage the machine). This is easier than struggling to sand them level. A trick we use to help retain character is to reduce the back side of the odd thicker board - you may have to adjust the tongue/groove on a router table. If you live in an old house consider using this technique and clean-up the top surface chemically - so no sanding - and the boards will look as if they've been down donkeys years. Newish house or a situation where there's a need for a 'clean' fresh look then it's out with the sander.

I think the most valuable time spent is detailing at doorways - this needs to be planned ahead of laying. To avoid tell-tale expansion gaps here consider cutting* grooves/rebates in door frames (these will need to be deepish to accommodate hiding the board edge and allow for any expansion). Carefully planned out will result in no apparent edge gaps and give the impression that the floor is original. Also for this reason we don't use wooden pipe collars around radiator pipes. Careful measurement, bored holes, slots cut to the board edge with a fine toothed (tenon) saw, the board positioned & nailed, the bit of timber from the slot glued back (tip: glue a bridging piece of timber underneath for support otherwise the top bit will fall into the void below). This creates the look that the rads went in after the floor. If you've got to use pipe collars consider using brass ones.

*to get the correct height for these grooves lay a scrap section of flooring in position then lay your handsaw flat on this to saw into the door frame.

 

[matt1098]

Personally speaking Im not a fan of engineered. Maybe Im getting my lingo confused or Ive only ever seen poor quality stuff, but by engineered I tend to think of boards with several strips of wood on each, so when laid the visible joins are only present at the boards end as the manafacturer has made sure that the join between the thick veneers are seamless. Its a bit like mosaic tiles which come in large sheets and where the tiler has not made the grout line between the sheets the same as the gaping on the sheet itself, your eye is drawn to where u can see the sheets end. Anyway thats just my taste- no criticism of what others like intended.

I bought reclaimed because:
It was cheaper than new
I figure its better seasoned- less likely to cup etc as long as the wood moisture level is right
I like doing my bit for the environment.

All of the strip has supposedly come from one job but slotting a few pieces together there is slight (1mm) height differences which will necessitate the use of a sander. I got a quote to plane the strip which was quite pricey and it was such a load of work to get it to my house, the idea of lugging it somewhere else is the stuff of nightmares

Symptoms- Id love to buy a Fein Multimaster for all the detailed sanding and rebating where necessary. However Im hoping that what with the original boards being lifted and replaced I wont need to do much rebating at all. thanks for the other useful tips re the detailing

 

[WoodYouLike]

Solid or Wood-engineered?
(And I don't meant the cat! )

 

[matt1098]

Let me just wet a finger........I can do blindfolded if you wish!!

Looks v nice