Chapter 23. Wood Floors
The woods used for floors are oak, maple, pine, fir, pecan, beech, hemlock; but by far the most common wood for flooring in houses is oak. Maple is used in public buildings, skating rinks, dance floors, etc. Eastern hard maple is very tough, close-grained and durable under hard usage. It is fairly light-colored, and is less interesting as the floor in a house than oak.
Oak flooring is of two kinds: white oak and red oak. It is made in several grades: clear, select, No. 1 common, and No. 2 common. The clear will be all uniformly light in color without defects. Select flooring will be almost as clear as the clear grade, but will have a wider range of color. No. 1 common will have many minor defects and a still wider range of color. No. 2 common will have many defects and many pieces will have to be thrown out. Actually, a more interesting floor can be made from No. 1 common than from either of the better grades, if one has the time to lay it carefully, once in awhile discarding part of a board. Select, or No. 1 common, will be the choice of the frugal builder.
Oak flooring must be well nailed. The boards must be well drawn together. After the floor is down, it must be sanded with a power sander, then filled, and usually given two coats of shellac or sealer. It is then waxed. The sealer is superior to the shellac in some ways. The finish should be down in the wood, not on the surface.
An ideal floor is given three or four coats of varnish and then is rubbed to a satin finish with oil and pumice stone, and rotten stone. This is a great deal of work. If people are not careful when they have nails in their shoes or track in sand they can ruin the varnish, and it is much harder to repair than the shellac or sealer finished floors.
The higher the gloss the harder it is to maintain. A rather dull finish, a satin patina, is better looking in a floor anyway.
Before beginning to lay the floor, first sweep the area very carefully at least twice, to get all the dirt out of the way, scrape off any plaster or other foreign material that is stuck to the floor and sweep again. Make sure there are no humps in the sub-floor and that all boards are securely nailed in place.
Then cover the entire area with a good quality of building paper, not felt paper, but some slick paper, a waxed rosin paper, or a vapor-proof slick asphalt paper, or some smooth paper, as this will greatly facilitate getting the boards together, and will give a nice clean surface for the flooring. It will also keep little particles of plaster from jumping up out of the cracks in the sub-floor and getting between the flooring boards.
To lay hardwood floor, see that the sub-floor is clean and level, without any warped sub-floor boards, and that the sub-floor is well nailed at all places. Be sure that the plaster is well dried out and that there is no source of moisture to cause trouble. Stretch a line down one side of a room, usually the longest room in the house, about 8" from the wall. Check to see that it is parallel with the wall nearest the string, and also see how it will come out at the opposite side of the room. When the string is adjusted exactly lay a board along the wall, and make it exactly parallel with the string. Do not attempt to follow the irregularities of the wall. Face nail this first piece with two nails at each joist so it will be solidly fixed in place. When the first board is in place the full length of the wall, start with the next one. You will note that the boards are tongue and grooved on the ends. Be sure the ends come tightly together. Be careful in placing this second board that the first one is not driven out of line.
After you have three boards in place, make a second check with the line, to see that the flooring has a straight start. If so, you may start several courses at once, by starting with a long board, following with one that is shorter and then a third still shorter.
 |
When you have about five boards started, move along and continue the boards until you reach the end. It is not necessary to waste even an inch of a board; select one for cutting when you come to the end that will give you a good piece to start the next course. By cutting a longer piece every time, you save not only the waste of the short pieces you would normally cut off, but also the time spent in hunting for a board just the right length. Use the piece you have cut off to start the next course.
Nail each board, driving it up tightly against the board previously laid. For 3/4" flooring use 7d casing nails or flooring brads, and for 1/2" flooring use 5d casing nails or flooring brads.
When you get near the wall, you may have to pry the boards into place. Avoid prying against the plaster; use a 2" x 4" against the wall to protect it.
In nailing flooring it will take a little practice to learn to hit the nail only, to get the boards tightly together, and to avoid hitting the top edge of the board, making a very conspicuous mark on the finished floor.
You can hit the tongue a bit without doing much harm, if you do not bend it down so far that it is difficult to get the next board into the proper place.
If you have too much difficulty getting a board into its place, perhaps you will find a stray nail or more likely a sliver from some previous board that has rolled under the tongue of the board previously applied.
Sometimes a fold of the building paper has been forced up into the space between the boards, thus holding them apart.
When the floor is almost finished, and you get near the wall, you may experience some difficulty in nailing the last boards in place. A large chisel or a wrecking bar may be necessary. Do not pry directly against the plaster, but put a piece of 2" x 4" about 3' long against the wall and pry against this. To get the last board in place, it is often necessary to remove the under half of the groove, put the board in place, and face nail it to get a neat job. Any nails driven through the face of a flooring board should be set or driven below the surface approximately 1/8" to allow for sanding and filling to make a good job, and to give opportunity to make the hole inconspicuous.
After the floor is all nailed in place, and the painting in the house is completed, you are ready to sand the floor. This is best done by the use of a floor-sanding machine. Perhaps an 8" size is best for a beginner. Begin at one side and go slowly up and down the length of the room, always sanding lengthwise of the grain of the floor, and do a thorough job until the floor looks clean all over. Begin with No. 1 or 1 1/2 grit of sanding paper, and finish with 1/2or No. 0 or No. 00 sandpaper. The grit used in floor sanding is usually aluminum oxide, a trade name for which is Aloxite. Garnet paper is sometimes used. Begin with a coarse paper, cut down the area to a true surface and finish with a fine paper. The floor is now ready for the finish. After it is sanded, keep people off it, or at least make them take off their shoes when they walk on it until it is finished.
There will be a small area near the walls that the sander can't reach. This will need to be scraped out or finished with an edger. A hand scraper which is easy to use will give a good job.
To sharpen the scraper, file the edge straight and true. Then with a burnisher, a nail set or other smooth hard tool, run along the edge with considerable pressure, and a burr will be bent out along the edge. This will be found to cut quite rapidly and will let you scrape out the part that the sander skipped. Scrape with considerable pressure.
To Lay Asphalt Tile
The concrete floor should have been troweled smooth when it was laid. Sweep it carefully and scrape off any bumps of plaster, stucco, or other extraneous material. Rub off any ridges with a coarse carborundum stone. Sweep the floor again to be sure it is absolutely clean and free from any dust or grit.
Strike a chalk line across the room to get a straight starting point. Cover the area to be tiled with asphalt tile adhesive, usually an emulsified asphalt, taking care to leave a space to stand or sit while you start.
Strike the chalk line again after the adhesive has been on for a half hour or so and begin to lay the tile along this line. Lay the first pieces very carefully, as they will determine the layout of the entire floor. You can walk on the pieces as soon as they are laid, so keep laying them, taking care to alternate the direction of the grain each time. Push them tightly together. A common mistake is to put too much adhesive on the floor, and to lay the tile too soon into it. If any adhesive is forced up between the tiles when you walk on them, either you have too much adhesive on the floor or you should wait a time before you continue laying the tiles. Adhesive oozing up between the joints is a sure sign of a poor job that will perhaps never be satisfactory.
You need only a very thin layer of adhesive, which should be allowed to dry until it becomes tacky. If you touch it with your finger and the adhesive comes up with your finger, it is not yet time to lay the tile.
If you are going to put a border around the room, find the middle of the room, and strike a chalk line across the room in each direction at right angles to each other, parallel with the walls. Start laying at the center where these lines cross, putting a tile on each side of the chalk line across the room. Then when you reach the edges, you will have the same border on opposite sides of the room.
Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...
|
|
|
