Hardwood Flooring

[LearningMustachian72]

Hey!

I need to replace the very worn carpet on my top story and would like to put in hardwood.

From reading online it seems like it is doable but isn’t easy.

I have limited experience.  Is this something I should take a go at or simply suck it up and hire a professional?

Any tips/guidance appreciated.  Thank you!

[lthenderson]

Laying down hardwood is very DIY friendly. If you go with click lock hardwood flooring, you don't even need much in the way of tools to do it. If you go nail down, you have to have an air compressor and special nail gun and perhaps a couple more tools but none are particular hard to learn to use.

What I would suggest is to narrow down the type of flooring you want and then search YouTube for installation videos. Almost every manufacturer of wood flooring produces their own videos for how to install it correctly. This will give you an idea if it is within your wheelhouse or you need to hire it done.

[bacchi]

I think the hardest part with click lock is pulling out and reinstalling the baseboard.

[lthenderson]

I should mention that there is definitely a difference in feel when walking over a click lock solid wood floor and a nail down solid wood floor. I prefer that solid feeling so went with nail down when I put down the solid wood flooring in this house this past winter. Doing a single room isn't bad but if you are putting down any kind of flooring that goes throughout multiple rooms, make sure you take your time laying out the first row of flooring so that it is straight and that you don't end up with a bunch of tapered pieces on far walls. You don't want tapered pieces in highly visible areas.

[SailingOnASmallSailboat]

We redid all the flooring upstairs in our house after being gobsmacked about the cost of carpet (house going on the market, 20 year old carpet not going to fly). It was simple to do but quite time intensive. We did the nail in tongue/groove bamboo flooring.

[GreenSheep]

To give you some context, I try to answer a question when I come here to ask one, and I just asked one... I have a lot more questions than answers about home DIY stuff. But even I can do flooring, so I think you can too!

I managed to put down hardwood in my living room several years ago when I was a clueless 28 year old with an equally clueless (but very helpful and optimistic) boyfriend-at-the-time. We did the kind you glue down. The glue can make a mess if you get it someplace it shouldn't be, but otherwise it was easy enough, and it looked great. When I sold that place, several neighbors emailed me to comment on how great it looked in the MLS photos and wanted to know who I had hired to fix it up.

Also, my husband redid all the floors in our house a few years ago, and he had little to no flooring experience. It looked amazing when he was finished with it, and now that we've moved, we can't wait to redo the floors in our current house. So I say go for it!

[M5]

There's tons of great YouTube videos on hardwood flooring installation (or any DIY project for that matter). That's usually my go-to for any DIY questions. We just bought a house and are replacing about 600 square feet of flooring with hardwood. Installers around here want $4-7/sq ft for installation alone! For reference we bought our flooring for $3.58/sq ft. The most important part is not getting in a rush to install and giving it the proper acclimation time to the conditions in your house.

Check Craigslist and Facebook marketplace for deals on tools as well. I was able to find a nailer/stapler that had been used to install one floor for $125. I imagine I can sell it when I'm done and get most or all of it back.

I don't know how people managed to learn DIY before YouTube came along! :P