My house is over 120 years old so I figured that an upstairs bedroom was long overdue for new flooring. Especially since it only had the old tongue & groove sub floor rather than nice hardwood or carpeting. In this Instructable I will go through the basic steps necessary to install a new hardwood floor. The tear up of the old subfloor took about 7 hours with the help of my wife. The installation of the new plywood subfloor took about another 4-5. The new hardwood I installed alone which took a weekend and a few hours on 3-4 weeknights. If you have someone to help through the entire project it could easily be done in a single weekend depending on whether you need to install a new subfloor or not.
I used the following tools & materials to complete this installation:
All costs are rounded up.
Hammer
Pry Bars
Compound Miter Saw
Circular saw
Cordless drill
Pneumatic Floor Stapler with 2" Floor Staples $120 total - rented
18 Gauge Pneumatic Brad Nailer
18 Gauge 2" brads $6
Air Compressor set at 100 psi
54 feet of 3/4" Pine Roundover trim $40
Approx. 180 Sq Ft of 3/4" prefinished oak flooring $525
5-1/2 sheets of 3/4" pine plywood (subfloor) About $90
1 box of multipurpose screws $10
Step 1Tear up old subfloor.
This may or may not be required depending on the condition of your existing sub floor. As I said, mine was tongue & groove meaning that the edge of one board fit some what tightly into the adjoining one. However the floor was quite uneven from years of wear and most of the boards were quite loose so I chose to remove all of the old boards and replace them with 4x8 sheets of 3/4 inch plywood. I used a circular saw to cut along the edge of the floor with the blade set at a depth just deep enough to cut through the boards yet not the floor joists. I also used the circular saw to cut the 4x8 sheets of ply wood to size.
Not that I would know (I'm only 14).