Hi, I've been doing a lot of DIY for the past 8 years or so and this is my first hardwood floor installation. I have previously refinished a floor and had very good results, but I have a few questions. I am installing 3/4" 2 1/4" white oak unfinished. Here are my questions.

I'm trying to maintain a 8" spacing, but some times the board length results in me using a cleat (2in) every 6 inches. Is this a problem. Do I need to be concerned with overnailing or is the recommendation 8-10 inches primarly what is needed to hold down the floor, but 6 inches will work on shorter boards just fine.

1. When I have a stubborn board, I am putting enough nails in to get it to lay flat. If I cannot get it to lay flat, I remove it, but have been successful in getting them to lay flat. I would say that there are times that my nail spacing does approach more like 2.5-4 inches for the very stubborn boards. Should I be relying on the next row of boards to help push the previous row flat or should I try to get each board flat on its own. I'm not talking about a lot of my boards, but sometimes it seems like you don't know if it will lay flat until you try.

2. If you accidentally end up with a few boards in adjacent rows lining up with each other (1-2 in), is this a major problem? Also I have a few H joints but I also know the floor won't be perfect. Is there any reason to fret about it?

3. When approaching a doorframe, are you supposed to go right up to the wall underneath the molding that is vertically attached to the door frame. I look at the rest of the house and it is under the molding, meaning there is not a 3/4 in gap for the floor to expand to the wall there. If I leave the 3/4 gap, then there will be a space of floor missing that is not covered by the quarter round. What should I do here?

4. When laying out/racking the floor, I am randomly pulling from 4 sets of packaged boards to obtain a random sample of boards for the floor. Is this enough variety to get a good random sample?

So far it looks good and I guess that means that what I am doing is working allright, I just had these questions after laying about 600 sf.

don't worry about over nailing..worry about under nailing.

undercut your door jambs so the flooring can fit under the door casing and jamb.

as long as you aren't breaking and splitting tongues , nail away..if you do break them as long as it isn't fully, you will be fine..

if you are having trouble with boards going together or laying flat, the milling isn't good and you will have beat them together..

Help, I have the floor entirely sanded down, and I started to stain and the stain is accepting differently (darker) where I used the drum sander than where I used the edge sander. The edge is much lighter. I tried to hand screen, with a push board that I made with screen on the bottom. So far, I have only messed up my bedroom which is 250 sf out of 1200. Do I just swallow my pride and have a professional finish the job, or do I just need to rent a screening tool. Also, if you are supposed to sand and stain with the A/C off, how are you supposed to do the job if you live in texas. I was dripping with sweat, and each time that a drop hits the floor, you have to re-sand that area, expensing energy, and sweating on another spot. When screening the floor, how do you know when you have screened it enough?

I run the ac while finishing just be sure to change the filter when your done. I run the thermostat up before i leave so it wont kick on for a few hours giving the finish time to skim over. You need to orbit the edges and buff the whole floor to give you a more consistent scratch pattern. Id call a pro if its in the budget. Sanding and finishing is what separates a hardwood craftsman from an installer.