Adding the Spline and Changing Directions on our Wood Floor Installation

Hey All!

Me again here!  We are still working away on our MAJOR home improvement project and today I wanted to share with you how we are changing the direction of our wood floor installation.

If you recall, Jim had started the floor with a long run going from the living room all the way into the kitchen.  We did this so we would have the longest stretch of floor being perfectly square and uninterrupted (not broken up by a doorway).  We worked our way from this middle of the room stretch towards the front of the house first, then completed the turn around the corner of the kitchen into the family room.  Now that has been made we have to work our way back towards the opposite wall in the living/dining room!

The floor we are installing is a pre-finished tongue and groove 3/4″ solid hardwood floor of a very trippy natural finish rustic maple.

To change the direction we needed to add in a spline to the ‘groove’ side of the board.  By doing so, the ‘groove’ side would then become the ‘tongue’ side, then it’s just a matter of turning the boards around and working our way back towards the wall and finishing this room!

Here’s a look at the spline set into the ‘groove’…

I was in charge of the spline (though I foobard a section of it and needed Jim’s help to fix it — seam rippers DO NOT work so well with wood floors my sewing friends, they just don’t!)…anyway here’s what the spline looks like before it gets put into the boards…

What I needed to do was run a bead of glue inside the ‘groove’ of the board and then insert the spline.  Here’s the glue we were using…

We thought we could have just used Elmer’s (that’s my go to glue…works on everything) but we thought we better go with what the store suggested.

Oh, in case you are wondering why I have my bike gloves on, well, I sorta got a little start of a blister (I know, whaaah!) after only hammering in 7 boards!  My fair hands just aren’t used to this manual labor!  Eesh!

So after the board is glued and the spline gets put inside you need to make sure you hammer it in there real good (I apparently didn’t do it good enough and Jim had to fix it).  Then you nail it in place…

That photo is a little blurry, sorry folks, but I think you can see those nails.  Once that’s done I went back and picked out the boards to start the new row!  We weren’t sure if we needed to glue those boards or not but I erred on the side of glue and did it anyway.  Here’s Jim putting in the first row from the spline.  My glue job was pretty awesome if I do say so myself…

Then about 8:00pm last night Jamba felt it was time to stop and was very persistent in his determination to get us to pet him so he could relax for the day.  Seriously, this is what he does!  Who is Serving Who, I remind him!  That was all that we did for the night and then today Jim really made some serious progress!

I can see the light at the end of this tunnel!!!

And the transition into the kitchen looks awesome!

Those are brace boards you see on either side of the floor coming into the kitchen.  They are there to HOLD the floor in place and will be there for some time while we complete the living/dining room and work our way into the family room before we even start the kitchen remodel.  It’s a long project we needed to make sure the edges stay square AND TOO they protect the tongue and groove of the boards.  We’ll cover this up with a pad and paper once the gut of the kitchen begins, just to give it another layer of protection.  It is not ideal but that’s how it will work!

Here’s a shot of what is left in the dining room…

…and here’s a shot of the completed floor, with paper over it, and the remainder of the floor we have YET to install!  This stack was twice as large as this when we started so technically we are halfway finished!  (with the floor that is).

Peace all!  And Happy Home Improvement (even if it IS National Sewing Month and I’ve not hardly sewn a stitch in MONTHS!)

~Cathy