Whether it is the living room, family room, dining room, kitchen or any other part of your home, wood flooring material is an excellent choice to add natural beauty and durability. Wood flooring is both beautiful and practical. Just protect it from water and moisture and avoid installing wood flooring in places with water such as the bathroom because wood expands and contracts with moisture, and can rot if it is left in contact with water for a long period of time. This is one reason why many homeowners shy away from choosing wood flooring for bathrooms. This doesn’t means that wood flooring cannot be installed in bathrooms. Infect, wood can be a warm, beautiful flooring option for bathrooms if it is given a sturdy, protective finish and is properly and regularly maintained.

Traditional strip or plank wood flooring is fastened down to the subflooring and then sanded and finished. Newer prefinished wood floorings are fastened down in the same way but they do not require finishing. You can do it yourself if you have some hands on experience and have some experience in sanding and finishing wood floors, otherwise you can hire a qualified hardwood flooring installer. The jobs is done better by a professional because floor sanding is an extremely dusty work, and an amateur with a drum sander in the hands can leave visible marks and ridges on the floor.

New wood flooring should be laid on a clean, smooth, level, structurally sound flooring base. The first step to installing a hardwood floor is to prepare the base. Make sure the base is clean, smooth and level.

Always stack the wood indoors for a few days before installing so that the wood gets enough time to adjust to your home's humidity level. Plan to install the flooring perpendicular to the floor joists.

For reference, mark the positions of the floor joists along a wall and then cover the subfloor with a layer of about 15-pound asphalt felt for moisture protection and to minimize squeaks. Mark the centerline of the room to avoid any confusion.

During installation, it is always helpful to lay out few rows of boards, staggering them so that no end joint is closer than 6 inches to an end joint in the next row. As you move to the next step to install the strips, cut pieces to fit at the end of each row. Always allow about a 1/2-inch gap at the wall.