is Pneumatic Floor Stapler a must? unfinished red oak.

smoochas

We are nearing the end of closet project where we enlarged our closets openings. Its a smallish space, approx. 130inch wide by 25inch deep (we combined 2 side-by-side closets by taking out the middle wall.) Our house was built in 1945. The flooring we took up in the closet was red oak, 3/4inch thick and 2-1/4in wide. (Oddly enough it was nailed in with masonry nails.) So we decided to replace it with similar stuff - at Home Depot, we found unfinished red oak made by Bruce.

My questions:
- do we need to rent a floor stapler for such a small space?
- is there something else we can use instead? hand nailing or?
- if we use this Bruce unfinished red oak, do we have to sand it before poly-ing it? if so, maybe we should have purchased pre-finished?

Thanks!

oh'mike

For a space that narrow a floor stapler will be of limited use--not enough room to swing the hammer!

Do you have access to a 15 Ga. finish nailer? That will work if you adjust the nose so it can set a nail into the tongue.

Also a lot of flooring was hand nailed before air guns were invented--I'm old enough to remember nailing a bit myself.--A cold chisel with the point ground flat is the best nail set for that.

As to sanding--Yep. As to your prefinished--How will you make that look good where the old meets the new?

I'm not a hardwood floor guy. Just an old carpenter.(we used to install the hardwood,too.)

One of the hardwood guys will chime in soon--there are a few here and they know their stuff.--Mike--

cebeling

I have a bostitch 16ga nailer that has different tips, one of which fits nicely in the "V" at a 45.

smoochas

Hi guys, if we can't use simple handtools like a hammer + ??? we will need to rent the tools from home depot. Looking at their tool rental sheet they have:
-Floor stapler (air)
-hardwood floor nailer 3/4" (manual)
-Floor nailer (air)
-Finish nailer (air)
and pneumatic equivalents.

so I should rent a finish nailer since a new one looks to be around $159? Well, we do have the rest of the house to renovate, but after this, we just might find some good help. This project has taken extraordinarily long to do...

We had planned to refinish the existing oak floor in the bedroom but really didn't want to do it until later (so tired of sleeping on the floor)... and now with this new stuff, it seems like we should plan to sand all at the same time.

We were going to put a saddle over where the old meets the new.

oh'mike

It's always a good idea to sand a whole area at once. I suggest you just hand nail it.

A compressor and a finish gun is a good thing to have if you are doing other projects.

You will not loose face if you call a hardwood installer--You may be pleasantly surprised at the cost of installing the little bit that you have to do.
Especially if they are going to be the ones adding the finish later.

I hire out all the hardwood work--the pros are so fast and efficient that it
is cheaper for me to have the work done than it is to do it myself.

----Mike-----

tpolk

and you can still stand up straight

__________________
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