Hardwood Floors Installed

We finally finished installing the new hardwood floors throughout the first floor of our house. Here are some thoughts and lessons learned from this project:

• Following some advice from the 416fixeruppers, we bought a used floor nailer on craigslist so that we wouldn't have to deal with rentals. This proved to be a very wise decision as it allowed me to be able to do a few hours here and there, rather than trying to do a ton of work in 24 hour periods.
• The most difficult part of the project was having a quality transition from the hardwood onto the kitchen tile and into the kitchen cabinets. We were able to shave down the first piece of wood to avoid the need for a transition piece. We had similar difficulty installing up against the built-in bookshelves in the living room, but we can use quarter round there, so it wasn't too bad.
• We had to change directions using slip tongue splines, which is not generally hard to do. However, our house is not open concept, so moving in and out of five different rooms was very time-consuming, especially when we had furniture to move around and couldn't do the whole thing at once. Installing hardwood in a big rectangular space would be soooooo much easier.
• Cutting around supply/return vents was a pain, but not too bad. We started out with five supply vents and four return vents on this floor, and now we have six supply vents and two return vents (two of the old return vents were previously closed off). We bought beech vent covers, which we will stain to match the hardwood when we finish the stairs project.
• I was surprised by how many pieces needed to be hand nailed (typically the last 4-5 rows) because the floor nailer did not fit close to the wall. I drilled pilot holes above the tongue and hand nailed these rows, and then used a brad nailer for the last row (those holes will be hidden by the quarter round). By doing this, we limited the number of face nails that require touching up to about a dozen (around the kitchen cabinets and tile).
• We decided not to install hardwood in the front hall. Instead, we installed a wood frame around the front hall (see third photo below) and plan to install slate tile in that space so that we don't have to worry (as much) about the wood getting ruined by wet boots.
• We removed the old tile hearth, which was not adequately supported (only 2x4's for joists). We installed new 2x8 joists, replaced the subfloor, and then framed wood around the new hearth (see fourth photo below). We plan to install slate tile here as well.
• Finally, I would not recommend installing dark hardwood if you have two big dogs. We love our new floors and it is a 1,000% improvement from our dirty old floors, but our dogs have already put a number of scratches in the floors. They don't scratch off the finish or anything, but you can see the scratches are there when you look in certain light. This would be less of a problem with lighter coloured floors.

Here are a few reveal photos ... we'll have bigger ones as we do the finish work on the first floor ... it's currently a little messy with lots of reno/baby/Christmas stuff.

Next up: tiling the front hall and hearth, and installing new steps/railing.