AboutStuart Mawle Expertise Now been a carpenter & joiner for the past ten years in the UK. I can give avice / help on carpentry & joinery, health & safety, woodworking machinery, power tools and suppliers. I have served an indentured carpentry apprenticeship with a medium sized building contractor doing a wide range of domestic and commercial work. This has included office buildings, barn conversions, building extensions and renovations. During my career, I spent over three years as a wood trades technician at a college. My job involved joinery work, wood maching and helping CITB carpentry & joinery students` pratical projects. I am a member of Institute of Carpenters
Question Hi Stuart,
Hope you can help!
Live in Scotland and have bought reclaimed teak flooring - I reckon about 1" thick or so.
Trying to cut down costs and fit ourselves - dad has worked a lot with wood and I think we can cope but need a few pointers.
Can you give us a few tips?
Someone suggested lifting the chipboard and fixing the teak onto the joists to prevent us having to take a bit off all the doors. Also only laying in the hall and lounge so need to prevent a step betweem rooms as much as possible.
I have ordered the correct tool from HSS - floor nailer.
I take it we start from a wall - one joiner said we would start from the focal point of the room which would be the bay window - i.e the centre of the room, not the wall.
How due we mask the gap from hardwood to carpet/tyles.
Please give any other tips.
Look forward to your response. Getting wood on Tuesday need so it would be great if you could respond quickly.
Many thanks
Gaynor
Answer Well, laying a timber floor isnt hard to do especially if you got some DIY skills. You dont often start by a wall, as suggested by the joiner, the centre of a room or focal point would be the better. I wouldnt be nailing a hardwood floor down as I prefer floating type method. This basically involves removing the skirting boards, laying feltboard board underlay (or acoustic foam underlay) then laying the floorboard on top glueing them (tongues and grooves) together with a pva glue, which means I wouldnt remove the chipboard flooring and it would mean taking off a bit from the door bottoms. The reason for not nailing is that you bringing in wood that could have a slightly higer humidity value than your room areas are. The wood will always adjust to equal it self so it could shrink (or expand). When you nail, you fix that board into a position so you may end with slight gaps between one board and the next. There is going to be a height different between the the two flooring materials but you can overcome it in two ways, you can buy a variable height metal strip or you can make a wooden taper threshold to allow for the different height. Tips, www.screwfix.com is the place to go for bits and bobs and they have all the gear (clamps and the like) for laying wooden floors. You should never have two joints aligning across the boards, it looks terrible, try to keep them atleast 12inches or 300mm (30cm)apart. I would clamp up the boards together, as tight as possible. On a floating floor you can only do 3 or 4 at a time untill the glue holds about an hour in centrally heated room. If you are secret nailing then you can only do one at a time. Never use a hammer or mallet on the direct edge of a tongue or groove, get an offcut, slot the offcut onto the board egde then hit the offcut. If you are doing a floating floor then you need to have a 3/8 of inch or 10mm (1cm)gap all the way round from the walls. I would recomend putting a thin coast of the finish that you are planning to use(see manufacturer's guidelines) on the top and bottom of the boards prior to laying. This helps to protect the timber from dirt and the like during laying process, even if it means you have to sand it back later. Talking of sanding, teak dust is consider toxic, irritating to the lungs, eyes and skin so I recommend if you can get a sander that can be connected to a hoover as well as the get dust masks that have a p2 rating (toxic particles) not a comfort mask that you will find in most diy shops. I hope this helps you. Stuart Mawle
