Hardwood Floors: Laying, Sanding and Finishing





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by: Don Bollinger

Topics include: car decking, nested bundles, unfinished strip, balanced baseline, floor mechanics, prefinished flooring, staggered seams, flooring dealers, medium sanding, slash grain, primary baseline, face nailed, laminated flooring, sanding equipment, strip flooring, power nailers, moisture stable, parquet patterns, parquet tiles, diagonal layout, face nailing, your flooring, blind nailed, rough sanding, floor sanding

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From Library Journal
While wood flooring has been much in vogue in recent years, it has received little if any exceptional treatment from do-it-yourself writers. Bollinger, an experienced flooring contractor, has produced what has to be the definitive guide to installing and finishing wood floors. He addresses the three types of flooring: strip, plank, and parquet--covering such topics as estimating costs; selecting wood types and grades; preparing the underlayment; planning the layout; sanding; and applying various finishes. Bollinger brings in many tricks of the trade, such refinements as wood and metal inlays, and ideas for dealing with the irregularities that invariably crop up in the repair or layout of floors as part of renovation projects. Nicely illustrated with photos and drawings. For most public libraries with active how-to collections. A companion video is also available; contact the publisher.
- Bill Demo, Tompkins Cortland Community Coll., Dryden, N.Y.
Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.

Really a "must read" -- If you're planning to install or refinish wood floors, you really should read this book. Installing wood flooring is definitely something a determined beginner can do, but there are some pitfalls along the way. This book will help you avoid them. There's also a companion video that I highly recommend. The time and expense of buying and reading/watching these materials will be returned many times over by avoiding mistakes.
I used the book and video to help prepare myself for my first DIY floor installation, and everything went extremely well. I also had some coaching from a local installer, which I highly recommend. He had me practice on an 8' x 8' square before doing anything on the actual floor. The more you can learn, the easier it will all be and the better the final results. In my case, the results were really quite astonishing - I had many, many comments and compliments, and more than one person mentioned that my work was better than the "professional" work in their own house. That's an advantage of doing it yourself - you can take the time to do it right.

Before you call for estimates, read this book -- This book will help solve "Many" questions about hardwood floors. The insight it provides will help you decide to "do it yourself" or hire a "licenced professional". Don teaches you step by step from start to "finishing". Deciding on what type and grade of wood is a mystery for most homeowners. Don makes this simple by explaining the different types, hardness, what grade, and a general price guide, to help make this an easier decision. The installation tips will save you hours of frustration and assure a quality look. After reading the book my mind was at ease about doing it myself. Dons book is nothing but "Simplistic Logic". Thanks Don !

Reviews:

Hardwood Floors
Don Bollinger
Laying, sanding, and finishing
Nothing compares to the warmth and durability of a beautifully finished hardwood floor. With Don Bollinger's help, you will be able to install a strip, plank or parquet floor with professional results--and then preserve it with a rich finish.

You don't need flooring experience, and the tools needed can be rented locally. Using crisp photographs and drawings, Bollinger goes step by step through the process. He explains how to estimate materials, select the right kind of wood, prepare the subfloor and achieve a blemish-free finish for an old or new floor. Bollinger also gives you numerous tips and tricks and sources of supply.

Hardwood Floors

Don Bollinger

Laying, sanding, and finishing
Introduction

1. Why Install a Wood Floor?

2. Materials, Estimating and Tools

3. Preparation and Underlayment

4. Strip and Plank: Layout and Installation

5. Parquet: Layout and Installation

6. Sanding and Finishing

Resource Guide

Index

Hardwood Floors

Don Bollinger

Laying, sanding, and finishing

Since the early 1980s, wood flooring has undergone a phenomenal resurgence in popularity, both for residential and commercial construction. To those of us in the flooring business, this comes as no surprise; for even though other materials may be cheaper or faster to install, wood retains a beauty, warmth and durability that's hard to match. In one form or another, wood flooring has been afoot for centuries but in some ways, it's just now in its heyday. Because home buyers have become discerning enough to insist on wood flooring, the companies that make it have introduced flooring in unprecedented variety. As recently as a decade ago, oak strip flooring was the standard, if rather limited, fare. Today, you can buy flooring in dozens of species, and not just strip flooring, either, but in the wide planks once found only in well-preserved periord homes. If you can't find the strip or plank flooring to suit you, it's a simple matter to have flooring made to order. Parquet flooring, which was hard to come by during the 1960s, is once again available in wide variety. Along with the flooring have come new finishes that are faster to apply and more durable than the coatings they replace.

All of this means that it's now more practical than ever for the owner-builder to install a new floor or to refurbish an old one. Note that I said "practical" and not "easy." I don't for an instant pretend that flooring is easy. Carting bundles of flooring up a flight of stairs, puzzling out a layout and nailing the floor down are all physically and mentally demanding tasks. It's not the sort of thing you can rush into and expect good results. Nonetheless, laying a wood floor is well within the ability of anyone with average tool dexterity. It takes very few special tools, materials are readily available and, if this book does its job, the skills will come quickly.

I've intentionally limited the breadth of this book to three major kinds of wood flooring: strip, plank and parquet. Through drawings, photos and text, I have attempted to explain as thoroughly as powwible how to install each kind of flooring. However, I have by no means covered every variation of each type, preferring instead to convey enough fundamentals to allow you to interpolate solutions for problems not specifically discussed. Like any othe trade, flooring has its share of "special cases" -- what to do, for example, when new flooring must match old or how to deal with radiant heating. I've tried to include real-world solutions to these problems, but again, not every situation is covered.

As are all endeavors, this book is a bit of a compromise. I have written it primarily with the experienced owner-builder in mind, so most of the book is devoted to detailed how-to information on installing wood floors. However, readers who wish to subcontract the work to a professional will also find useful information, especially in Chapter 1, which deals with selecting and specifying floors, and in Chapter 2, which explains material grading rules. These chapters should also be informative to architects, designers and builders who may occasionally need to deal with flooring contractors. And although I don't intend this book as a trade manual, I hope professional floor mechanics will find useful nuggets within its pages.

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