Introduction on How to Install Hardwood Flooring

Usually, in home design and interior decorating, we have to make a lot of compromises. We either get the comfortable couch, or the environment friendly one. 

We can get the more expensive but better looking drapes, or we could go with the cheaper, plain ones. Enamel bath tub or plastic and the examples could go on and on. 

Fortunately, there’s one particular area of your house that you won’t have to sacrifice anything to get the best of: your floor. 

Let’s take a look at how to install hardwood floor yourself properly and without too much effort.

 
Before we get into actually laying hardwood floors, let me emphasize on the fact that most of them are made with home users in mind, so they’re extremely easy to install yourself. 

You don’t have to be a building wizard or even passionate about do-it-yourself stuff, as long as you can fit two matching shapes (and I bet you did since you were a child) you’re good to go. 

In some cases, a little more effort is required, when you will have to cut your hardwood floor tiles to smaller pieces to get exact fits for your room, but it’s not like you need a PhD in lumberjacking to do that either.

 
Regardless of the type of hardwood flooring you’re installing, you’ll need a precise saw to get your panels to fit in the room, some adhesive solution (sometimes this comes in the same package as the floors) and a couple of free hours or more, depending on the size of the room. 

As you will notice, most of today’s types of flooring have small trenches on one length and one width and equally small obtrusions on the other length and width. 

These parts fit, so you will have to connect the bumpy part of a panel to the cavity part of another panel. Sometimes, adhesive is used to keep the panels together and to stop them from getting pushed apart later on.

 
Unless you’re using floating panels, you’ll need some extra adhesive when installing hardwood flooring to keep them glued to the ground. Start from one side of the room, from a corner and work your way down in rows. 

Click in panel after panel, following the hardwood floor installation instructions I mentioned above and when you reach the other end of the room and a full panel doesn’t fit anymore (unless you’re extremely lucky!), measure the distance to the wall and cut a matching panel of the same dimensions. 

Start on the next row and work your way progressively, making sure each panel fits perfectly and there are no hollow spaces between them. Soon enough, you will see for yourself that it’s not so hard learning how to install hardwood floor all by yourself!

• How you learned to install hardwood floors?
• What was the hardest part of the installation process for you?
• How long did it take you to install your hardwood flooring?