Hello All,

I've been following this board for a while and learned a lot from it, thanks to all the posters for taking the time to share your experience!
Now it's my time to share my experience as a firsttime DIY parquet installer and ask for some advice

At the moment I'm installing parquet flooring in my home, about 50 m2 (I think that's around 500 sq.ft), 7 cm (~2.75 inch) wide and 6 mm thick (1/4 inch). There is no tongue or groove. I'm sorry, I'm still fighting with the imperial system, as I'm from the Netherlands. I calculated all the imperial values using a converter on the 'net so hopefully no errors there.
The floor is actually a diagonal weaved basket pattern, with Jatoba running in one direction, and Afzelia in the other direction, and Wenge dots filling up in between (those are the european names for the wood, I don't know how you call them at the other side of the pond). All the boards are 35 cm long (13.75 inch) except for the Wenge dots, the are 7 x 7 cm.

I've got some pictures up at http://www.vrijetijdstad.nl/floor. The pictures taken at night have dark spots due to my crappy camera not flashing very well.

I'm glueing the floor on a subfloor made of small squares 40 x 40 cm (15 x 15 inch) of 12mm (1/2 inch) of particle board, that are glued on a cementuous slab.
This is the recommended way of laying parquet over here, except that they face nail it too, which I chose not to do (instead I used weights and tape). This worked out quite well, except for a few hollow spots and a couple of raised boards that I'll need to repair or replace.

I have a few observations and questions:

Most important for me:

How would you sand this floor, which machines would you use (rotating disc or drum sander?), since all the wood grain is in different directions? How much time do you think I should count to do this myself (days or weeks )?
I have to do this myself due to restrained budget (but no deadline ), otherwise I would probably hire someone to do it. But OTOH it feels good to be able to say "did it all myself!" .
I have quite some height difference since these are three different wood species with sometimes poor milling on the boards, about 2mm max height difference (0.78 inch).
The floor will be finished with Osmo clear wax, we don't want a shiny lacquered appearance, but a more natural matte/satin appearance. I already have a very good experience with osmo hardwax in my previous house.

Further questions/observations:


is it normal that the wood (jatoba a bit more than afzelia) warps as soon as it comes in contact with the glue? (which is Lecol 1653, a dispersion glue with a very low moisture content)?
The wood also swells wider quite a lot as soon as laid in the glue, to come back to normal after a day or three. Especially when laying the border, I saw this happen: I dry layed all my border pieces (small short pieces all perpendicular to the wall) which fit perfectly over about 4 m (about 13 feet?), and took 'm out the next day and glued them, I had to cut about half a cm (1/4 inch) to make the last one fit (which had fit perfectly prior to this).
So, this makes me think that the wood reacts to the glue. Since this glue is specially sold as meant for moisture sensitive wood species, I wonder if this is normal and also happens with other glues...
I have quite a few gaps in the floor, probably due to the glue but also due to tolerance on the wenge dot sizes, with the largest gap being about 2 or 3 mm wide (0.8 inch). Do you consider this a problem or is it easily fillable with wood filler?
It feels to me that installing the border takes more time than installing the rest of the whole floor! For you pro's, how is your midfield vs border laying ratio? (or how much time do you spend on borders compared to laying the field, let's say on an L-shaped room with a few extra corners and 2 doors)?

For the record, I spent 3 weeks on this floor now (only evenings and weekends, not full working days), with about 2/3 of the border still to lay.

Thanks in advance for your advice,

Best regards,

Bas

Wow, what a floor! I like it very much. A couple of things. Over here, our particle board is crap and if we'd laid it over concrete, in would dissolve into sawdust in a few short years. Perhaps yours is of a much higher quality. Also, I notice the flooring is solid, non-veneered. Well, if the adhesive (glue) you are using has ANY water in it at all ( and I suspect it does ), it will swell that wood up causing temporary cupping and swelling as you are experiencing. Over here, most experienced flooring installers would have chosen a moisture curing urethane adhesive (these contain no water). We also temporarily tape the flooring together to help keep joints tight while the glue cures/dries. But overall, I think you're doing a terrific job with a complex pattern.
As to the sanding. If I were to sand this floor, I would use my Lagler Hummel belt sander and sand parallel to the rooms walls, which would always be at a 45 degree to the wood grain/direction. I set the machine on a medium cut first with 40 grit belt and sand one way then the other. Now it is time to fill the floor. Since you have three different types of wood, getting a single filler to match all three is nearly impossible . You could fill each type with filler that match each particular wood species. This would be slow but it seems that you are not in a hurry so I'd consider that. Alternately, find a colored filler that matches the lightest wood and trowel that over the whole floor. Any light filler between dark woods could be "inked in" later if is was bothersome. Next I'd sand with 60 grit the same way, followed by edging the floor to 100 grit. Finally I'd sand to 100 grit on the belt sander. TIP: When using the drum/belt sander, you need to walk QUICKLY and not remove too much wood. Then it's time to switch sanders. If you can get a Lagler Trio, that would be a great machine to do the 100 grit sanding on. If not, use a slow speed (175 rpm) buffer and a hardplate attachment with 100 grit sanding discs and hardplate the snot out of it till it's absolutely flat. Now you'll need to screen starting with 100 , then 150 and for a wax finish, final screen to 180. Now you're ready to oil and wax, or just wax if you prefer. I like the look of a penetrating oil sealer on exotic woods and believe it helps seal and stabilize the wood better than wax only. You can wax over the oil sealer once it's dried long enough. Good Luck.

Hi Gary,

Thanks a lot for your detailed advise! this is exactly the information I was looking for, I hope I will be able to get it done as good as you just described . I will post a message in this thread as soon as more pictures are available to show the results. (in a couple of weeks )

Well I sure hope that won't be the case for me!
The particle board used here is watertight A1 quality board, my supplier doesn't sell anything else. The supllier told me to use the particle board as a buffer for the expansion forces between the parquet and the cementuous floor. Directly glued hardwood patterns on these cementuous floors would come loose taking pieces of cement with them due to expansion/contraction.
He also advised me to use the adhesive I use right now, telling me that it was the most sold for this kind of pattern floors. Probably he expected me to face nail the boards. This glue has been a charm to work with otherwise, easy to take of fingers and easy to remove stains.
I'll have a look at urethane based adhesive for the rest of the install (still need to do the hallway).

I will do a 3 color fill, I'll try to match the color by sanding up some boards and mix in the dust. Maybe I can get a separate wood filler for Wenge as this one should be quite dark. You don't think the larger 2mm gaps might become a problem to fill?


Thanks again for your input,

Best regards,
Bas

Not the case here. If water or any moisture gets to our regular particle board, it quickly disintegrates. If you had been using a urethane (waterless) adhesive, you would not be experiencing cupping from the adhesive. The adhesive you're using is easy to clean up and work with because it is a latex/waterbased/acrylic/rubberbased product. It must have some water in it. If the cupping is not concerning you, then don't worry about it. As for filling, mixing the sawdust will work BUT you will need to sand each species separately. So sand the uninstalled wood and save the dust in three separate containers. I mix with a clear lacquer callled wood flour cement. Deep or wide gaps may need a couple of applications. It will be slow and tedious. Over here, there are companies that make premixed fillers in different colors. they work great and are easily to use. No noxious fumes either. I use a brand called Woodwise.
http://www.woodwiseproducts.com/woodfil ... patch.html
Another brand lots of guys like is Timbermate.
http://www.timbermate.com.au/info/datas ... ermate.pdf

Excellent advice again, thanks a lot.

It seems the filler brands you are using are not available here, but I'm sure there must be similar products. I like the idea of a clear (transparant) filler mixed with sawdust, as it would allow the filler to darken the same way as the wood itself over time.
I'll take the slow and tedious road this time. I know that later it will be easier to forget the hard labour that went into the pretty floor than to not notice the cut corners every day...

Also make sure you dont come to a stop before you lift the drum off the floor
Start lifting lightley till all the way up as you walk to where you are going to stop , start walking backwards , and lowering the drum the same way .. If you follow Garys instructions , you should be fine ..

That really is a nice looking floor. I can't offer any advice, just wanted to congratulate you on a nice looking floor.

JustinTX: thanks!

Flooring guy: thanks for the heads up. I've sanded the subfloor before laying (took out about 9mm (uhm, 0.35inch) height difference out of the floor in some spots that way) and I found out indeed that the machine tends to "dig itself in" to the floor. It actually helped me to get rid of some higher spots

I'm actually more concerned about handling the rotating buffer type machines, I can imagine that the torque on these machines can be quite high, I don't know if I can handle that (as a software engineer, I don't have the trained body that most flooring guys have ). I know that the edger already almost took me on a trip by itself around the room when edging with 40 grit on the subfloor (almost cut through the radiator piping because of that!).

Bas the Buffer is the easiest of the machines .. Dont fight it .. Once you adjust the handle a little above your waist .. its just lift to go right , and down to go left .. Once to get the feel you can run it with one hand and hold your beer with the other ha ha ..

It may be just me but I like the handle just below by belt, if you are just learning a white pad is a good way to get a feel of the machine without marking up the floor. with a little practice you will start to "feel" it, it doesnt take much pressure up or down to really make the buffer move and if all else fails let go of the safty switch

A white pad, that's a good idea, I'll try that first!

I think I'll keep that beer until I'm done sanding though . Although drinking beer during sanding might help to randomize the movements to avoid swirl marks a bit

Thanks!

Bas

Bas,

Great floor! Please advise when pictures of the completed job are available for viewing

Don

wow that is a really pretty floor!!! you should be very proud of yourself.

The glue darn sure has water in it and that is what is causing the cupping.

Sweet, pattern.

If you used a waterbased adhesive, it will cause the cupping and later gaps, as mentioned already.

Is that concrete your going over?

Thanks for the comments! It's good to hear positive things because sometimes with such a project you only see the things you did wrong, and it's hard to detach

I checked the adhesive specs on the manufacturer site, and yep, it's waterbased. The one I use (Lecol 1653) is supposed to have a much lower amount of water in it than their regular adhesives, which is true because it dries much faster than the adhesive I used for gluing the subfloor (you need to lay your boards within 15 min otherwise the stuff dries up).

The cupping is mostly gone by now, and I've got fine seams now between the boards and a couple of boards that came loose on one side, that I'll need to replace. Actually the seams are not annoying, as it kind of makes the pattern stick out more. Also the height differences make the seams more visible. I guess that after sanding things will look much better.

The floor is a concrete slab with a 3cm cementuous layer poured over it (with a barrier in between). We call that "sand-cement" over here. These 3 cm contain the electricity and piping to radiators and such. It's on the second floor so no trouble with moisture from the basement. On top of that directly glued to the cementuous layer comes the subfloor (12mm - 1/2inch) and then glued to that the hardwood.