Hi everyone,

I wanted to thank everyone who contributed in giving me advice and suggestions with installing my hardwoods over my concrete slab. I am proud to announce that I have layed my last hardwood floors. I install #2 Common White Oak over a 3/4 inch exterior grade plywood subfloor that was attached to the slab using flooring adhesive and concrete screws, drilled about 1 1/2 into the slab. I cut the 4x8 sheet of plywood down to 2x4's and 4x4s, cut grooves on the back and used about 12-16 screws per sheets. Over kill, I think. I used a hammer drill (bought and resold on eBay) to make the pilot holes for the screws. It was fun to use. I know Gary mentioned laying the subfloor on a diagonal, but laying the subfloor as I did created no problems for me when laying the flooring.

Leveling the floor using leveling compound was the worst part of the project. I filled all the low spots on the slab and in some corners of the room I had a 1/2 in drop. Fill them as best I could, figuring the combination of adhesive, plywood, felt paper and flooring would hide the imperfections.

Bought a refurbished Bostich Pneumatic nailer on eBay for $375.00 and resold it 4 months later for $350.00.

As for the sanding, did not use a drum sander (skerd of em') but an square sander, taking my time and using a lot of 32 and 60 grit paper to get the floor as smooth as possible. Worked pretty well.

Use the Bona Water base finishing system. AWESOME stuff.

The results are not "pro level" by any means, but I'm happy with the results. So are the neighbors. At any rate, I won't be quitting by day job anytime soon. Here is a link to some of the images. http://stankaady.com/floors/

Lastly, I'm trying to calculate what this project would have cost if I hired the leveling, attaching the subfloor, installing the flooring and finishing to a contractor? Total was 600 sq ft. I also layed 900 sq/ft of floors upstairs a few years ago. What's an average per sq/ft cost for this these types of project. I'm in Atlanta.

Thanks again everyone for you help.

Best...Stan

Looks great Stan. Glad to hear our advice helped. Now all our contributors, take a bow!