Flooing nailer question

[Sean Rainaldi]

Hi,

We are getting ready to install hardwood flooring into our kitchen, just the standard 2 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick tongue and groove type unfinished oak flooring bought at Lumber Liquidators - not the engineered wood. I guess we will rent a manual style flooring nailer from Home Depot.

Two questions, is that type of flooring nailer OK for the job? Also are there any additional specialized tools I would need to install the flooring?

Also any installation tips?

Thanks.

[Jason Strauss]

Hi,

We are getting ready to install hardwood flooring into our kitchen, just the standard 2 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick tongue and groove type unfinished oak flooring bought at Lumber Liquidators - not the engineered wood. I guess we will rent a manual style flooring nailer from Home Depot.

Two questions, is that type of flooring nailer OK for the job? Also are there any additional specialized tools I would need to install the flooring?

Also any installation tips?

Thanks.

Sean,

When you say "manual style floor nailer", hopefully you're referring to the pneumatic style nailer/stapler. I once rented a true "manual style" flooring nailer w/ no pneumatic assist - it was a disaster. I'm not Popeye, nor am I a circus strong man. Apparently, you need to be either of these guys to use the manual nailer!

The pro who did most of my floor (same as your only 3" wide) used staples. I dont' know if this is industry standard, but...

For obvious reasons, you'll need your TS and miter saw. You may also need some sort of other straight pneumatic nailer to fasten you starter course(s). I suppose that you could just pre-drill and use a hammer for this task instead.

I'm no pro, but I've learned more through mistakes than I ever thought possible!

[frank shic]

i'm putting down costco bamboo hardwood flooring right now and let me tell you something: you definitely want the pneumatic nailer/stapler if possible. the stapler supposedly holds better but i had a dickins of a time trying to find them at home depot and eventually had to go to lowes to pick them up. they're also a major PITA if it misfires to pull out. i'd recommend getting either a porter cable or cepco flooring jack. you won't use it that much but once you get too close to the wall to use the flooring nailer, YOU WILL ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT TO DEATH. it's much harder trying to pry that last board in place while trying nail it with the finish nailer. btw you can expect to take several hours longer than you would with laminate flooring on the install given the narrower widths and the fussier nature of real wood. also spend as much time as necessary to lay out the first few rows so that everything is straight. you can actually use the boards themselves if they're straight enough. let me know if you have any more questions as i'm rapidly becoming an expert lol.

[Scott T Smith]

Hi,

We are getting ready to install hardwood flooring into our kitchen, just the standard 2 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick tongue and groove type unfinished oak flooring bought at Lumber Liquidators - not the engineered wood. I guess we will rent a manual style flooring nailer from Home Depot.

Two questions, is that type of flooring nailer OK for the job? Also are there any additional specialized tools I would need to install the flooring?

Also any installation tips?

Thanks.

You want to use a pneumatic nailer that requires a hit with a mallet to shoot the nail. The mallet hit tightens up the boards immediately before shooting the nail. These are typically available from rental yards.

Flooring nails are usually either a staple or an "L" type nail. Both work well.

There are two primary installation methods. The old-time method is to put tar paper (roofing felt) down on the subfloor, lay your flooring boards on top of that and nail. This helps to prevent squeaks.

The other method is to skip the tar paper, and run a thin line of glue below the T&G portion of the flooring, so that the boards are glued together below the tongue. This type of installation takes longer, but since some of the glue will squeeze out and attach to the subfloor, you will have the tightest and squeak free floor possible.

Double check that your walls are parallel to one another before starting. You don't want to reference to one wall and then get to the other side and find out that you're lines are off.

If you use poly as the finish, be sure to spend the extra $ and buy "non-yellowing". 10 years down the road your wood will still look vibrant, versus a washed out yellow color for the standard stuff.

[Jamie Buxton]

The old muscle-powered Porta-Nailer laid floors for many decades before the pneumatic nailers showed up. I'm not a Popeye sort, but I've done three houses worth of floors with one. It works. The biggest hassle for me is the threat of blisters on my nailing hand. A good glove helps.

You'll find that near some walls you won't have room for the toe-nailer, so you'll have to face nail for a couple of rows.

[Jim Foster]

I put in about 1,000 ft of rift sawn oak from LL's everal years ago. I used an air powered tool for hardwood flooring and would strongly recommend air power. Staples are supposed to be better for plywood or man-made subfloors, but I used the nail-type gun and so far the nails are holding fine in the man-made subfloors. I also picked up an air powered finish nailer for the edges.

Caution: Lumber Liquidator's sells some pretty questionable 3/4 inch unfinished hardwood flooring. It may look fine and with attention the floor will come out fine, but the difference is in the milling quality and the wood quality. If a board needs a lot of force to get it in place, throw it out and use another. Put 20 or so boards in place to get a feel for what "a lot of force" means with your install. I learned the hard way over the install. The two floors I did look good, but one of the floors has a number of issues from the boards not fitting well and me forcing them too much instead of culling out the boards that did not fit well. I also had to throw out a lot of boards and should have bought about 5% more waste than I did in order be able to throw out a lot more boards.

I used red building paper under the hardwood and it's served well so far. Tar paper was used in the old days as a vapor barrier and squeak silencer when the floor below was the basement and a lot of moisture was coming up from the basement. Today with new houses having dry basements it's not as much an issue and usually the building paper is fine.

One other consideration is that if the subfloor is only nailed down and it has squeaks or may develop squeaks, screw it down with deck screws before starting. My subfloor in one of the rooms was forty years old and nailed down and squeaking; screwing it down solved any future problems.

Hope you find a tidbit in this that helps, and have fun, other than the problem I mentioned I enjoyed my flooring project.

[frank shic]

consider using aquabar as an alternative to red rosin paper or the traditional tar paper. it's less stinky! also, be prepared to do a fair bit of tapping to get the next row to lock with the tongues of the preceding row. you can use the back of the mallet if you don't whack it too hard. btw i found the fein multimaster invaluable for cutting out halfway seated staples.

[Sean Rainaldi]

Hi thanks for all the advice!

Yes Jason I was referring to the old style non pneumatic assist nailer, but after reading these posts I may get rent the pneumatic type. Problem is though my air compressor died a few months ago so I would have to either rent or buy a new compressor.

Another question I forgot to bring up, our house was built 50 years ago and the sub floor consists of just 5 inch wide pine boards run diagonally over the joists and they are spaced out with a 1/4 inch gap between each board. I guess that was standard construction back then. Anyone do hardwood over this type of sub floor? Any tips ore recommendations there?

Also, I have a U shaped kitchen, the boards are going down the length of the kitchen with cabinets on both sides, so I have to get those last two or three boards under the kick panels which I assume is going to be a pain - getting them nailed in along the edge of the cabinets plus only having 4 inch clearance above those two or three boards. Any suggestions there?

Thanks.

[Jim Foster]

I would suggest the flooring nailer that shoots nails.

Maybe use real tar paper, since it was how this type of sub-floor was always covered. With the diagonal sub-floor you can probably run the flooring either way and ignore the joist direction if the sub-floor is nice and stiff.

For the flooring close to the cabinets, an air powered palm nailer may be a good soution if an air powered finish nailer does not work well.


Hi thanks for all the advice!

Yes Jason I was referring to the old style non pneumatic assist nailer, but after reading these posts I may get rent the pneumatic type. Problem is though my air compressor died a few months ago so I would have to either rent or buy a new compressor.

Another question I forgot to bring up, our house was built 50 years ago and the sub floor consists of just 5 inch wide pine boards run diagonally over the joists and they are spaced out with a 1/4 inch gap between each board. I guess that was standard construction back then. Anyone do hardwood over this type of sub floor? Any tips ore recommendations there?

Also, I have a U shaped kitchen, the boards are going down the length of the kitchen with cabinets on both sides, so I have to get those last two or three boards under the kick panels which I assume is going to be a pain - getting them nailed in along the edge of the cabinets plus only having 4 inch clearance above those two or three boards. Any suggestions there?

Thanks.

[Jamie Buxton]

.. I have a U shaped kitchen, the boards are going down the length of the kitchen with cabinets on both sides, so I have to get those last two or three boards under the kick panels which I assume is going to be a pain - getting them nailed in along the edge of the cabinets plus only having 4 inch clearance above those two or three boards. Any suggestions there?
....

Can you run the flooring the other direction? That is, the tips of the boards would be under the toekick. I presume that is the narrow dimension of the room, so it isn't how flooring is usually installed. But as you said, nailing underneath the toekick is going to be very difficult.

[Mike Goetzke]

I'm surprised I see so many negatives against the manual flooring nailers. I put hardwood floors in most of our house and used a manual nailer and I never had a problem with fatigue or blisters. FYI - I'm doing some remodeling and need to replace some of the flooring and picked up a refurbished Bostich nailer on Amazon for $60 and it looks brand new.

Mike

[Sean Rainaldi]

Mike,

I am thinking about using the Senco model SHF 15 manual floor nailer are you familiar with this one? is it a good unit? They rent them at Home Depot.

I am only doing 80 square feet the kitchen is fairly small. If I was doing 200 or 300 square feet then I would probabally use a pneumatic nailer.

[Sean Rainaldi]

Jamie, yes I can lay it in the other direction. Cosmetically though I think it would look better if I laid the flooring lengthwise instead of perpindicular to the cabinets.

[Tom Rossman]

I use a Bostich pneumatic stapler and it works great. A Fein Multimaster is a great tool for under cutting door jams and cutting off misfired staples.

[Sean Rainaldi]

Thanks everyone for your advice. And Frank, or anyone, I am finishing up the floor and am looking at those flooring jacks you reccomended, I found one a harbor Freight for 25 bucks, it's at http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=98787&xcamp=google&utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=cpc&zmam=33951326&zmas=12&zmac=112&zmap=98787 have you ar anyone used this particular brand? it's way cheaper than the Cepco or PC jacks that you reeccomended...

Also, on getting those boards under the toe kick of the cabinets, I guess for getting that last one or two boards down my only option would be to glue them down and wedge something between the board surface and the underside of the cabinet to hold them while the glue dries. Anyone agree or disagree on this?

lastly, when I was watching ask this old house, they had a tool with hooks or flanges on each each end, it was really just a flat bar with opposing flanges, which when hooked on the end of a board which is up against a wall, and hammered on the other end, one can pull the end-to end gaps between the boards closer together. Does anyone know what this tool is called and where i could get one? My last boards which butt up against the cabinet have slight gaps between them and I want to try to close them up a bit.

Thanks.

[Brian Backner]

I just finished doing two rooms in my house for a total of 365 square feet. +1 on using a pneumatic stapler as one advantage to using them (in addition to ease of stapling) is that the force of the piston will easily seat and straighten all but the most stubborn flooring strips.

I was initially going to rent a Bostitch MFS-III from HD, but they wanted something like $50 a day for it and I knew it was going to take me more than a couple of days to get the job done. I took a chance and bought the orange clone from Harbor Freight - with the 20% off coupon in all the handyman magazines right now it came out to $120.

I put pneumatic gun oil into it and drove a clip of staples into a chunk of 2x12 I had laying around - seemed to work fine. After starting the actual red oak flooring, however, I started getting the more than occasional jam. After becoming very adept at removing the nose piece to clear the jam, I guessed that maybe I hadn't used enough oil, so I poured over an ounce into the thing - BINGO! No more jams for the entire floor. I also made sure to add a goodly amount every day when I started up again.

You do want to make sure to use red rosin paper between the subfloor and the hardwood - it reduces squeaking from the rubbing that occurs as the wood moves with seasonal expansion/contraction.

You will need a finishing nail gun as well to handle the first/last four rows or so next to walls/cabinets.

Another thing to consider is using slip tongues to split really wide rooms into two halves. T&G flooring tends to expand/swell in the direction of the tongue. A pro taught me many years ago to split rooms wider than 12 feet or so down the middle - snap a chalk line and nail a 1x3 furring strip along it. Then butt the groove side of your first row against it and face nail it down about 1/2" from the edge of the furring strip - staple the tongue side as per normal. Add several more strips to stabilize the floor then remove the furring strip. Add slip tongues to the now exposed groove and start laying strips in the other direction.

Good luck and have fun!

Brian
Taxachusetts

[Bob Lloyd]

Sean

I am not sure of the name of the tool that you mention even though I have one! I think that I got it at Home depot and I believe that it was more designed for laminate type flooring though it works fine with hardwood.

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

I put in about 1200 ft of flooring with a "manual" nailer.
http://www.porta-nails.com/nailer/index.shtml

It takes quite a while to get the hang of it. You'll spend a lot of time with a nail set at first, until you figure out how hard to hit it with the hammer. Also, be very careful swinging the hammer when you get to the last 18" or so, as it's easy to hit the wall while swinging. I did 4 rooms, and the last ones went very quickly, with no problems.

But next time, I'll go pneumatic.