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Building our new house:
Hardwood floors going in

On 5 and 6 June the installers started putting down the hardwood flooring.  Our floors will be:

• Hardwood:  Great Room, short hallway, long hallway, study, master bedroom, linen closet, and dish closet
• Carpet:  Two guest bedrooms, master BR walk-in closet.
• Ceramic tile:  bathrooms, vanity area of master bath, pantry, utility room.

The hardwood flooring will be finished on site -- 3-1/2 inch wide red oak; stained with Minwax Provincial stain with two coats of satin finish polyurethane.  Here are a couple of photos of the installers laying the hardwood.

Looking from the front of the Great Room toward the kitchen, which is the rear of the Great Room.  In the far left corner one guy is in the doorway leading into the pantry (ceramic tile floors there); behind him is the double electric oven.  Note the chandelier -- it will hang over our dining table.  The tan walls are painted with Benjamin Moore interior flat latex, color Sandy Beach.  The wall on the left edge of the photo is painted with the same paint, color Mayonnaise.

Close-up of the installers at work.  The sub-floor is covered with a layer of moisture-resistant paper then the hardwood strips are laid down.  The hardwood strips are tongue-and-groove and the installers sort through the strips to find various lengths that will result in staggered seams.    Note a zigzag line separating two sections of flooring -- the boards on the far side of the line have been nailed down with those on this side of the line are ready to be nailed.  The installer will pull one board at a time tightly up against the boards already in place.  The yellow object behind the two guys is a pneumatic stapler -- installer hits the top piston with a hammer and the stapler fires a long staple through the tongue of the hardwood strip into the sub-floor.  The guy in front, closest to the camera, is selecting boards for length.

Before the hardwood flooring could be installed, the lumber must first be acclimated and we had to get the humidity out of the house.  We ran dehumidifiers for several days until the humidity inside the house was below 12 percent, then, the hardwood was brought in and stacked inside the house for a week so the wood could acclimate to the house. 

After the hardwood is installed, the installers will:

• Apply wood putty to any irregular spots and joints.
• Sand the entire surface of the floor to make it smooth.
• Apply one application of stain -- Minwax Stain, Provincial color.
• Let the stain dry for 24 hours.
• Apply one coat of satin gloss polyurethane varnish.
• First coat of polyurethane dries for 24 hours then is lightly buffed with extra fine steel wool.
• Vacuum the floor to remove buffing dust and apply a second coat of polyurethane.
• Takes about five days for the process.

Go to hardwood flooring page 2 to see the rest of the flooring installation.