Appreciate any feedback with issue I have some concerns over. My wife wants to harwood bedroom, living room and hallway, and is convinced I can do this myself - - I'm not so sure. Have done some trim work, have installed laminate flooring, and have also done some refinishing of hardwood flooring but still am concerned.

For you experts out there - - would you recommend dyi or am I just asking for trouble? Also, for dyi what flooring would you recommend, ie, solid unfinished, prefinished, etc. Thanks for any input!

TJ,What kind of subfloor are you going to put the wood over?Concrete,plywood,OSB?Do you want glue down,nail down or floating floor?There can be alot of prep work,for proper installation.For a DYI,it`s hard to make recommendations without knowing what type of area your dealing with?There are lots of good prefinished products to choose from.Both solid and engineered.IMO,site finished floors have a better result.

The underlayment will be 3/4" plywood, above grade - - was considering a 3/4" solid hardwood oak (maybe Bruce) using a pneumatic stapler. We're looking at doing a bedroom which transitions into a small hallway which then transitions into a living room - - total area approximately 850 s.f. Thanks for your advice.

Are you using prefinished or unfinished?Either way be sure the plywood is flat and use 15 lb. felt paper.

If I can do it anyone can do it. Get ready to sweat though. I live in Seattle and installed mine (3/4" Brazilian Cherry) in 65 degree tempatures and I worked up very good sweat. I didn't know that I was THAT out of shape

It took me 2 weekends to do my bedroom (250 square feet). This was my first attempt at installing flooring (I will be doing 1150 square feet in 2 phases starting this September). The Builder's Pride brand (I guess I am one of the lucky ones) flooring went down really easy. The only thing I wish I would have done was buy 4" width boards. Almost half the work of my strip 2 1/4" flooring

If you don't have one already, you will need your own stapler. With the amount of footage you are trying to put down I would suggest that you get a 15 guage finish nailer (boards close to the walls) and an 18 guage for your baseboard.

You can get the flooring stapler from Harbor Freight.com ($119.00) and I bought a 3 pack of air tools (15/18/fine wire) from Schucks Auto ($129.00). All of these are generic but they worked excellent for my DIY project. Good Luck!!!!

Thanks Hexar and KRV! I've decided to go with a prefinished hardwood. And I do have pneumatic finisher nailer and will certainly look into your recommendations about the floor nailer. OK, if YOU can do it, I can do it!
Thanks again.