what is the thickness i should buy in wood flooring. oh, does anyone also know about floating a hardwood floor. i live in san diego where most of the homes are on a slab and i was told the wood floor would have to be floated. i was quoted $2500 for a room size of 14x18, is that too expensive? they wanted like $9 a sq ft. would i be better off buying floor from the company direct. if do i was told pieces may not fit properly. what should i do

$9/sf installed is a decent deal. We charge $10/sf, so based on your market it's probably a pretty average quote.

If you want to do it yourselves, you're probably looking at a cost of $4-5/sf once you rent all the equipment. The point where most people give up is when it comes to sanding and finishing. If you want to look around for other quotes, the thing you want to start with is finding the exact flooring that you want and then getting all of the quotes for that same product and for its installation.

what type of wood would be good to buy. i remember you once talked about southern pine. i thought i remember someone saying to stay away from oak i think. what are other types i should go with. i also been thinking about pergo due to the cost of laminate vs. wood, but i'm unsure. is a 3 1/4 thickness a good size.

My husband has put down floating floors in 2 of our homes. The last one was Bruce Coastal. It was about engineered wood planks on laminated onto 3/4 plywood. Comes in 4 and 8 feet lengths. Can get at Lowes's or HD at a cost of about$5 square foot, about the same as laminate. And not a hollow sounding. If you are handy with a table saw, it may not be too difficult for you.

If you're comfy using a table saw, I would suggest you buy plain, unfinished maple or pine (yellow or Southern over the knotty). They're all fairly inexpensive, very easy to work with and a breeze to install if you don't need to nail. The "floating" aspect only means that you're laying an underlayment that's fairly soft and will allow expansion/contraction without friction. The laying of the floor isn't the hard part. You basically want to start on your longest wall with the tongue facing the wall. Leave yourself about 1/4" all the way around (which you'll cover later with baseboard) which is your expansion zone. You want to mark out chalk lines along the way that will let you confirm you're staying straight.

As you cut, just remember to stagger your joints so that there's always a minimum 6-8" between a short joint on one row and the next joint on the next row. That'll minimize buckling through the years. Use a rubber mallet to adjust your boards as you go.

When you get to the last row, your expansion is still 1/4". This is where you realize why you wanted to start with the tongues facing the 1st wall. There is inevitably a spot where it's tighter than others. Though it rarely happens that you have a full board width at the end, it does happen. If you need to trim to get it to fit, it's easier to do an angle cut from the bottom to allow easier fit.

Then you sand the edges with a belt sander or hand sander and the rest of the room with a large floor sander. Unless it's really uneven, you only have to do medium-fine-screen (it does make a huge dusty mess, but if you close off the room with plastic it's better.) Then use a wet/dry vac with the right filter to capture the dust. Follow that with a tack cloth all over the room (even the high places so that the dust doesn't float after you start finishing).

After you're sure you've captured every bit of dust that you can possibly capture, you either stain the floor (wooly rollers work very well to put it down, and a clean wooly roller to take off the excess)...or you go straight to sealing.

If there's a lot of water in the area, finish with spar varnish. Otherwise you can use any good quality floor-worthy varnish or poly. Best to give it 3-4 coats, allowing each to dry thoroughly and screening in between (and of course capturing any dust all over again).

Cost in Alabama.

3/8 x 3 x random planks of Bruce 15-year engineered hardwood... about $3.70 square foot. This is for glue down over a concrete slab.

Labor runs between $2 and $2.50 a square foot to have it installed.

Additional costs for me were the glue (big bucket was $45) T-mold for the doorway and 1/4 round to finish off next to the baseboards.

Lowe's was the same price as getting it from another source... and they had the match to the hardwood already in my house.

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