We are new to this site and we are hoping someone will have some help on a situation: our neighbor recently replaced her hardwood floors and offered to give us her original hardwood flooring. It had been stapled down, so some damage, especially to parts of the edges that lock together, but we are hoping we can replace our laminate flooring with the used hardwood flooring. It is 3/4" oak. Can this be done? We have a slab foundation and were hoping to glue the hardwoods down. I like the finish of the hardwoods - they are hand scraped and the stain has quite a bit of variance in color. If we are able to do this, will we absolutely need to refinish them, or can we use them as is? Thanks in advance for the advice!

You can always re use boards but you said you are gluing to a slab and this is one of the toughest , most problem laden type of installs. Step #1 is to absolutely test the slab for moisture. Then test the flooring for moisture content. They need to be within 1 or 2 percent of each other optimally.Even better is when the moisture content is the same

Some other general things to do are to use a moisture blocker like Bostich MVP .It is a liquid material that you apply to the slab to seal it. There is a ton of info on this forum and on hardwood installer .com to read .

As far as sand + re finish , keep in mind that you are going to have some over and under wood (unevenness from board to board ) but sanding will remove that .Also, check your slab to see how level it is.If it is lumpy, your flooring will be a pain to glue down.

It sounds as if your neighbors floors were solid 3/4" hardwood. If this is the case you can not glue it to the concrete slab. You would first need to add a layer of plywood to the slab and then nail to the plywood. However, if your neighbor had an engineered wood floor, then this could be floated or glued to the concrete.