Direct stick timber floor over a large area
Hi
This forum is really informative, I've been reading it now for a while but this is my first post.
I am putting an upstairs extension onto my house and want to have a wooden floor upstairs that matches the existing Jarrah floor down stairs. I am thinking of putting down jarrah 58 x 12mm boards. The upstairs sub floor is 19m particle board flooring.
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The lady in the shop assured me they were dead easy to lay. Either trowel out glue and stick them down or put a zigzag bead of glue down each board and put two nails in the end of each one. Then finish with a sealer and Wattle High Gloss Flooring Estapol. I have sanded and polished a couple of pine floors in the past successfully.
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After reading a lot I feel there may be a little more to it than that.
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The questions I have are:
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As I am doing 103 square meters over several adjoining room, should I start at one end and work my way to the other trying to keep the boards going through all the door ways? Or should I stop at each door way and start again with a full board along the next wall. I’d be very lucky if it worked out that I didn’t have to slice boards lengthways to be able to keep going around walls. I’m thinking that in the door ways I should plane the board off to the required size so that I have a complete board along the next wall.
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I’ve been reading about expansion gaps and floors buckling. I know I need to leave 10mm around the edges but do I also need to leave some gaps every few meters? If so how often and how big? Do you put a coloured flexible filler into the gap?
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Would you suggest the trowel on glue only or zigzag bead of glue and nail approach. The nail approach will work out cheaper, I have a nail gun and I don’t mind the finished look. But if the complete glue will give a sounder finished and less chance of problems down the track…
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How long will the boards need to acclimatise? Until there is no moisture in them. Given that it is now winter does that mean I should leave them in small bundles around the room until the weather warms up?
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One last thing, the boards I am looking at are called Fully Featured which means they have a fair bit of grain and featured holes which you first fill with a clear two part epoxy resin before sanding and finishing with the Estapol. It looks great in the sample on the show room floor. Any thoughts on this?
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Sorry to make this so long, but this will be a bit of an outlay and I want to get it right.:)
