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On a new installation of wood flooring what is the minimum gap between boards for raw and pre finished wood?

I have 3/4′ Solid Ebony, it is a very hard wood. I am stapling it down on a diagonal. I started in the middle of the room and glued three planks in one row (5′) down with construction adhesive PL. I also spline and stapled both sides.

We are currently having Bamboo floors installed in our house by a contractor. The contractor is saying that our subfloor is uneven because of settling. He wants to run the floors in our family room perpendicular to the way he laid them in the living room and dining room? Shouldn’t the floors be laid in the same direction throughout the entire house? Is there a way to fix the uneveness of the subfloor?

Wood Flooring Guy, I am having unfinished 3,4 and 5″ Walnut flooring Installed. One installer says to glue and nail it down, without paper or felt to hold better and prevent cupping. Installer #2 says use paper or felt , nail every 8″, and if concerned bisquit and glue each end.

We are refinishing our fir floors. We have used a dark stain called jacobean. The color looks great. Now we have put a satin polyurethane on, and it has appeared to make the tone more of a red color.

I have removed my carpet. The subfloor (particle or pressed wood) has damage from pet stains. There are rises in the wood. I want to put laminate down. Will that be a problem? What can be done to correct the problem, so I can install the laminate?

I am installing a 5″ plank engineered wood flooring in my home. It is hand scraped wood that is supposed to be glued down. The house has a slab foundation and part of the subfloor is covered with old vinyl tiles, and the other part is old VCT 9″ asbestos tile. It is all glued down with cutback and is very securely affixed to the slab. It is not coming up. Because of this, my plan is to level it all out with self levelling concrete, and lay the engineered wood directly on top of the old flooring. I will be using Bostick’s Best adhesive. Do you see any problem with this? Will the adhesive properly adhere to the old VCT tiles? Should I (if possible) put a skim coat of the concrete over the top of the tiles to help adhesion? Any other ideas/suggestions?

I have plans on installing 3/4 inch hardwood flooring over 5/8 inch OSB subfloor. Would this be okay? If not, why not? Also, if not, what should I do to correct this aside from pulling up the entire subfloor?

I am purchasing a home and don’t know which is the best, most durable wood to choose. I worry about wear and tear over the years. What is the best way to maintain wood floors before you have to change it, or not? I don’t love too much grain in the floor, that is why I prefer maple; but is Black Cherry, Maple or Walnut better? If I have to choose oak due to cost, should 3/4″ size or more be better? What about staining the oak? I was told that staining is not good. I thought that all wood had to be stained to achieve all the various colors that are available. What then is “natural hardwood” without staining, but in a darker color?

Is it OK to walk around on (specifically, move in and finish painting) hardwood floors after being installed, but before sanding and poly? Can it harm the wood?

We are hearing from flooring stores that hardwood was meant to be glued, not floated. Is gluing the floor better than floating it? We are fairly handy people. Would you suggest we attempt to glue down the floors instead? Or is that something that is typically left to professionals?

What does it take to put real hardwood on top of an existing laminate floor? The plywood floor under the laminate is level and we installed to laminate as a level floor. If we rip out the laminate we’re back to having to level the plywood. Is this advisable, to install hardwood over laminate? Will there be any “smacking” sound, even if we screw the laminate floor into the subfloor?

I have 2″ slat hardwood. Small gaps. I used 3 coats of B*** water based polyurethane 10 years ago. I would like to refinish the floor. I would like to use a thick high gloss like Marine varnish #13. Would the cracks and small gaps show again? If I put down enough coats, would the natural floor movement start the cracks between the slats again, or would it be a solid coat?

What kind of sub floor needs to be put down for hardwood floors that are stapled down? In general.

Recently I installed oak hardwood floors in my house. I used pneumatic nailer, but at the area close to walls I had to nail down manually, and I can see gaps between woods. How do I fix this problem?

We are in the process of buying our first house and we have a couple questions about the floor. The previous owner put in some bamboo engineered hardwood flooring, but he didn’t do a very good job with the details (meeting toilets, sinks, trim, etc.), so we are thinking about trying to fix it. We think it’s a floating floor, but we’re not sure if it’s glued or glueless at the seams. Do you think it would be possible to take up the floor and put it back down? We’re going to carpet one room that currently has the hardwood, so we hope to use the wood from there as the extra we’ll need to fix the other rooms.

I have a contractor who said my hardwood floors are too thin to sand and finish. Assuming that is true, he is planning on installing a new 3/4 inch floor on top of the old floor. First, is this normal? Or should I ask him to remove the existing floor? Secondly, any advice on choosing unfinished oak vs. pre-finished?

We have had no problem with expansion of the wood tiles butted up against the ceramic in this room. Should we expect an expansion problem in the living room where all four wood tile edges will be butted up against ceramic tile? We would rather not use transitions around this for obvious reasons. Are there installation tips that could help us in installing the oak parquet and minimize potential expansion problems?

We’ve decided to put a 3/4″ hardwood floor over 3/4″ plywood, on top of a cement floor. Our problem is that by doing this we are going to lose a lot of height off our base boards, and they will look substantially dwarfed. Our walls are newly painted and an installer told us that we can’t take off the base boards without damaging the walls above. New baseboards would hide damage 3″ above existing base boards, but apparently the damage done to the walls is higher up.

My hardwood floor is constantly having to endure things being dropped on it, creating dents. Is there some sort of finish that better protects floors from damage?