I have scanned the forum and the photo section. There is a lot of great information here that will help me immensely.

I plan on using Thomasville engineered hardwood and nailing it down over a plywood subfloor. The joists for the first floor all run from front of house to back of house. From what I have read, I should run my flooring perpendicular to the joists. That should not be a problem. One question I did not find an answer to relates to how to keep the flooring as square as possible when covering the entire first floor of my house (excluding the marble entryway). I will have four separate rooms to cover - living, dining kitchen and family. There are glass doors between the living and family rooms and privacy doors between the kitchen and dining room. Do I need any type of transition between rooms in order to ensure that the flooring in each room is as square as possible within the room? I worry that if the rooms are not perfectly square with one another, I will end up with flooring in the last room completed obviously out of square with the walls.

Any and all advice is much appreciated. Links to pictures of suggested approaches to this would also be appreciated.

Measuring off walls and popping your starter line, is the most important.

Other lines popped off dry laying off into other rooms, after squaring the line to the room, to fudge a little if you have to.

Thanks for the quick response.

I have scanned the forum some more and have found some discussions that are similar to my situation. If I read everything correctly, it seems that I should snap my reference line along the longest run that I will have, ensuring that it is parallel to the walls in adjacent rooms.

Do I then start installing the flooring on the reference line and work each way from the first course of boards? This seems to be the ideal approach.

My quandry is that since I am doing the entire first floor, including the kitchen, I will need to remove all existing flooring in order to snap the reference line. I plan on doing this over the course of several evenings and weekends. I guess that I will just have to live with no flooring in these rooms while I am laying the new material. (I know that my wife will want me to take it a room at a time without removing more existing flooring in advance than necessary, but I don't see how I could snap accurate reference lines and leave the existing flooring in place).

I will try and get a rough plan posted so that I can show how I plan to attack this job. I know that I need to "measure twice and cut once". I also know that a well thought out plan of attack will minimize the pain and any minor corrections.

Right now, I am planning on purchasing the materials this weekend. I have also read that my best bet is to buy a flooring stapler (bostitch) and then sell it on ebay when I am done with it (I didn't see any used ones there this past weekend). I have a compressor and 50 feet of hose. I have a 10" miter saw. I need to get a saw to trim the door moldings. What else do I need to have in order to do this right?

Thanks in advance to those who can provide advice.

Accurate reference lines are necessary and without them, one risks running crooked and having to straighten a floor out. You need all the old floors out first.

READ: http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwo ... -tools.htm

Accurate reference lines are necessary and without them, one risks running crooked and having to straighten a floor out. You need all the old floors out first.

READ: http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwo ... -tools.htm

Thanks for the link. I missed that before.