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This is my 4th of july weekend project. I have not every put down solid flooring flooring before. Any tips to make this easier? It is 5 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick and I will be using a pneumatic stapler with 2 inch staples
-take your time.
-leave ~1/8th gap around the walls for expansion
-remove the baseboard, don’t just go against it and use quarter round
-wear knee pads
-run the boards along the LENGTH of the room, if you go the opposite way it will make the room look stubby.

Should cover it
all of the above recomendations are correct, but I ran my boards opposite of the longer walls since my Formal Dining room was so long/narrow, its 21X13, running them the way I did made my room appear wider, and not as long.
Additional advice: open all boxes of flooring in an adjacent room to where they will be installed and let them acclimate for a minimum of 48 hours to ambient temperature and humidity. If the boxes are large, separate planks with sleepers.

A layer of rosin paper or #15 felt in between the subfloor and finished flooring will help to eliminate squeaks. Consider free downloads of information from NOFMA, or similar.

Loosely lay out several courses at a time on the floor and look at how plank end joints arrange with respect to one another. This helps to reduce waste, and also avoids a cluster of joints, which looks like shiat.
Thank you everyone. My wood has arrived today. all 1,325 pounds of it. It felt like a billion pounds carrying.

Ok so I have placed the wood into the room it is being installed into. Today is wednesday and I am begining tomarrow evening. It will have been in the room for at least 30 hours prior to begining.

I am trying to not use quarter round. It is probably just me, but when I see it, I know it i only there as a cover up. Plus I am reusing the existing moldin which I have already removed from the wall. It is 3/4" thick so I should have so gaps. I am since 1/8 was recomended above, I have some hardboard that is 1/8 thick, I am going to chop some up to use as spacers - thanks for the tip!

I am not going with the length of the house cause I cant. The room is 14′ wide and 27′ long now. It was 2 rooms seperated by pocket doors that has since been removed and reused. But my subfloor is tongue and groove and I have to go perpendicular to it (going across the short side. I think that it will help widen the room. The subfloor is T & G cause it was built in 1905. ( the gas pipes used for lights are still in the walls)

Get knee pads? I would have never thought of that! but I can see how I am going to be happy I did. Thanks for that!!

Rosin paper? I have heard of this but is sqeaking the only thing it does? This is right over my basement and I can eliminate squeaks by hammering shims into the joists from teh basement. Honestly, the squeaking makes us feel like we are living in an old house like we are. I would find it odd if a hundred year plus house did not have creaks. But I know this is just me and my wife that are crazy like this. So does rosin paper do anything else?

also, how far do you space the staples. I have 3000 for 325 square feet and I will get more if needed. I have no idea if you staple every 6 inches or every foot or even further spaced??
~8-12 inches apart,

no closer than ~4 inches from the end of a board.

Oh and make sure you use a block, or the gun (it should have a spot on it to tap) to snug the boards up before you nail them.
Rosin paper eliminates squeaks between the sub and finished floors, which you won’t be able to get at from the basement. When I have subflooring exposed, I carefully walk the floor and screw down any pieces of subfloor to their joists to get rid of squeaks. To you, it’s old house character, to another customer, a noise that drives them batshiat, and they call me back.

I didn’t think of it until now, but I hope you have no stairs which depart, up or down, from this room. Reason being, the maximum permitted difference from the shortest to the tallest riser in a set of stairs is 3/8", so the additional 3/4" likely creates a code violation.
hee hee…..code violations

there are no stairs here, but I am planning a second stage of flooring for next year that I will be removing the reducers and continuing the hardwood in other rooms. What I did was I ran all the boards in the direct they wen and at the doorway, I installed a board in the doorway perpendicular to all the other boards and then put the reducer on that. I only used brad nails to hold that down so it comes up easy later. I have 2 staircases in the house. the main stairs off the foyer and a smaller set that I recently learned are common in the area and have been nicknamed "cookiesnatcher staircase" as they go from the dining are/ kitchen to a bedroom area. To me they are just stairs.

Somethig tells me that removing the knob and tube wiring and rewiring and adding circuits with no permit is a bigger violation. Or maybe removing my old oil furnace and running gas pipe in the house installing the new gas furnace and central air system might cause a buzz.

I want to thank you Kazoo and cybereye. I got the flooring done (345 squaer feet in about 24 hours) It looks great. I had some snags. I was 3 rows in when I noticed that I put the first row down just a tad crooked. I removed all the wood and grinded the staples off the bottom and replaced using 2 seven foot boards. and I could not figure out how to staple the boards when I got to the opposite wall. Got it figured out though.

Now for MY tips to anyoen who might try installign their own floor.

1) Have an air compresser, jig saw, and miter saw ON A STAND all nearby plugged in and ready to go. This will keep workflow moving.

2) Use an air stapler for hardwood floors. This is a beautiful device provided you hit the plunger hard enough. Otherwise, pulling out a staple that went halfway in is a pain.

3) I opened up all boxes and after having several rows done I stacked the wood up vetically against the wall. I had about 12 piles and each pile was all of the same length. My daughter did this. When I got to the end of installign a row, I could easily measure the size board I needed, and go right to a pile of wood that either fit perfectly or needed minimal cutting. You may think this is a waste of time and funny, but I also had less than 1% waste over the coars of all this.

4) a short board about a foot long works great as a way of tapping in stubborn boards without ruining the tounge.

5) knee pads are a must. and your back will be sore. But this is not rocket science and anyone who takes their time can have a great looking job.

6) a pull bar might be the best 7 bucks you spend

7) put a marker in your pocket and using it for drawing lines or marking boards and writing measurements on the back of the wood so you dont forget on your trip to the miter saw. I use a sharpie. And by default your can have a pecision marker - the line is 1.8 inch thick and so is teh saw blade
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I ordered my flooring from . They were the cheapest for Brazilian Teak, even with paying 280 bucks for freight was still cheaper than going to the local lumber liquidators and not paying for shipping by almost 700 bucks
here are pics

here is a wall I built to put pocket doors that previously seperated these 2 rooms. I have stripped them down but that is it for now, I still have to trim and case this all out.

take note of my sons easel in this pic

as you can see here, I am still in the middle of trimming the front windows. And you can see the lighting in the ceiling

close up of the floor. The scuffs you can see in the floor are from my son dragging that easel around. They come right out when we clean the floor.

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