Fortunately about half the floors we were going to do in hardwood were carpeted, so it was just a matter of scraping all the glue and whatnot off the concrete. The other half was tile. The tile popped up pretty easily using a 4" brick chisel. The problem was this left a good portion of the mastic still on the floor (figure 1). After using my 4" chisel for several hours, I realized there had to be an easier way of getting the mastic up. I inquired at the local big box home store rental shop if they had a tool to do this job and sure enough they did. The tool is made my Hilti and hammers a large flat blade across the floor. I won't say it is like a hot knife through butter, but it is much easier than a chisel on your hands and knees for hours on end. I rented the tool for around $50.00 for a half day rental. This was all the time I needed to get all the mastic off the floors.

Whether using a chisel or a renting a tool to do this, I would highly advise wearing a mask and closing off the other rooms of the house, as this will make a lot of dust in the house (figure 2).

After you get all the mastic off, run a floor scraper along the floor to make sure you have everything off, and then broom it up and double check to make sure everything is as smooth as you can get it.

The wood we selected is a red oak. As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to save some money and have a sort of older floor look, so we purchased a #1 common and had it run through a molder to come up with the profile shown in Figure 4. I was lucky to know someone who had a molder big enough to do this, but I'd imagine you can find these shops in just about every large city. We settled on a 5/8" thick 2" wide for smaller strips.

The wood was milled in 12' lengths but I asked them to cut them down to 6' lengths to make it a little easier to handle. The wood came in, and I let is sit in bundles in the house for a good week to let it get acclimated to the environment (Figure 5).

There are a number of different woods you can purchase already milled to many different sizes. After looking around, the choices are absolutely amazing. You definitely don't have to have your own wood milled to come out with a beautiful floor. I hesitate to put our costing on this site as the price of woods fluctuates so much over time.

The first step in getting started is to make sure you have enough room for the flooring under the door casings. In Figure 6 you can see how I cut the casings up just enough to let the flooring slide underneath.

Making sure the floor is clean and free of debris, roll out the underlay and make sure it is smooth and free of wrinkles. The wood is literally just going to sit on the top of this and "float". Don't worry, by the time you get it all in, the floor is going to be extremely heavy and will not move. I purchased the green underlay at a home improvement store and later found a different brand that I liked better. I'm still not sure which brand is best for my application, but they both seem to be holding up just fine.

The first row of wood is the toughest, because you really have nothing to square it against to make sure it is straight. It is critical that the floor remains about a 1/4" off of all walls so that is has plenty of room to shrink and grow as the moisture goes up and down in the house. I laid the first several rows going very slowly and making sure they were as straight as possible with my straight edge. I glued the boards together using Titebond glue in the groove of the wood. Using a hammer and sacrificial board I would gently tape the joint together to make sure I had a good fit.

As I mentioned earlier, the wood came in 6' pieces in a lower grade of red oak. Using my chop saw, I cut out all the 6' pcs into 3' pcs (much easier to work with) and cut out the knots and things which gave me a lot of smaller pieces. These smaller pieces are great for varying the patter. As you glue, make sure that none of the joints are too close together. If two end joints are too close together, the joint will be weak.

Before I thought of installing my hardwood floors I had a lot of people tell me it was terrible work, to be very honest with you I had a great time doing it. It definitely is not rocket science to do a hardwood floor. It takes a lot of patience and good set of kneepads but beyond that, there really are not any very difficult parts to the job. The last row is a bit tricky, and will probably require that you have access to a table saw to rip the last row of boards to the proper length.

Once you get the main area of the floor in, you'll have to deal with the changes between flooring. This can be a bit tricky, but it really isn't that hard. At all of the big home improvement stores, they oak in the shape of a "T". I attached this end of the "T" to the hardwood floor and let the other end of the "T" over lap the carpeting and tile. Once again, this allows the floor to move and still have a nice clean "joint" where the wood floor meets up with other types of flooring. Figure 9 is an image of the "T" joint going into a carpeted closet. You can also see in this image how the floor is off the walls and not touching anything. The baseboard will later hide this gap.

Once you get all your joints and the floor looks good, it is time to putty and sand. If you took your time and got the joints good and tight, you should have very little puttying to do. You can rent a floor sander or use a larger belt type sander. I started off with a 150 grit paper and worked my way up to a 220 grit paper.

Once you get the floor nice and smooth, you can finish it. I settled on a water based floor finish made by Varathane I really like the fact that it was water based and dried relatively quickly. The can is shown in figure 10. It is a bit pricey. I think I paid around $50.00 for the can. The can says to finish the floor with a brush, I thought I knew better and did the first coat with a wool applicator on a stick, and had terrible results, not to mention the wood sucked up about a quart of this stuff that just turned into waste. The next 2 coats I put on with a brush, sanding between all the coats with the 220 grit sandpaper to remove any bubbles or dust that may have fallen in the floor while it was still wet. Putting it on with a brush really isn't that bad with regards to time. The finish will bring out a richness to the wood once you get it all on. I let the floor dry overnight and then we walked on it with out socks and tried to keep anything heavy or abrasive off the floor for a couple of days.

After the floor is dry and had a decent chance to cure, you can install your baseboards. The baseboards help a lot to hold down the wood in areas where the sub floor is not perfectly level. I had a corner area of the floor that was definitely lower than the rest of the floor, and just put a little pressure on the baseboards to get the wood to stay down.