It’s been a long while since I last worked on a floor – over a decade. But the front stairs – wood exterior stairs need TLC every couple of years.
One of the steps was starting to grow some type of fungus. Really time that one was replaced.
By the time I was done, I replaced three steps.
Here’s mole getting started priming the stairs for our unit.
Meanwhile… We plan to move downstairs so that I can work on upstairs. But the bedroom downstairs had carpet: Fine as a rental, I suppose, but not nice. So we tore out the carpet. No hardwood floor under this carpet, sadly. Just many layers of vinyl composite tile.
Once I got down to the subfloor, it was better already. I decided to use a prefinished solid oak plank floor. I don’t have the equipment for the refinishing, and the prefinished is almost the same price as unfinished – the end result is also much faster.
I don’t like the look of quarter round to cover the necessary gap around floors – looks cheap and un-craftsman-ly to me. So I used a jamb saw to cut the exact thickness of the flooring from the bottom of the baseboards.
That is a little easier in theory than in practice, because sub-floors are not perfectly smooth. The jamb saw can’t sit perfectly flat on the slightly uneven floor, so the height of the cut varies slightly.
I put a border all around the perimeter of the floor, before infilling. In retrospect, I wish I’d selected out all the darkest and lightest pieces from all the boxes, and used them to make alternating light and dark boards in the border. Would have been a nice way to add a little decoration, without resorting to different wood species.
Selecting and placing boards takes quite a sense for color and shade. You don’t want to put two pieces that are overly contrasting together, but do you want to keep them sort of random. Otherwise you’ll get whole areas of the floor that are dark, and others light.
I started on the floor using an old mechanical floor nailer that my dad gave me when he helped me install the floors at the front of the house. It doesn’t require a very heavy hammer blow, but it must be perfectly aimed. Given the right technique, it works perfectly well. Needless to say, after spending a day with it, I went out and bought an air-compressor powered version. Sooo easy.
Tongue and groove flooring is almost all blind nailed (no nail holes on the surface). It fits together with tongue into groove on the sides and ends.
When doing this with a border, though, on every line of boards, you have to cut a board to fit against the border. One thing I did on this floor that we never bothered to do when I was working for my dad almost thirty (!) years ago, was to cut new grooves into all the cut ends of boards: Much too time consuming for a contractor. This floor, however, is completely interlocked at all joints, except for the one long side joint one third of the way into the floor where I’ve ripped boards to fit. I glued those in together.
To finish the job, I carefully taped all around, and caulked the gap between the floor and the baseboard. Then painted the baseboards.
Perfetto!
