Hi All,
In an effort to match the floor around a remodeled area, I am installing around 200 square feet of reclaimed 2” wide, 5/16” top-nailed red oak strip flooring in our Bay Area home.

I will be sanding the entire area with a drum floor sander, but I have noticed that some of the reclaimed boards are taller (by up to 1/8”) than their neighbors, despite being nailed over a pretty flat subfloor (recently installed plywood). Some are also lower, but I am guessing that those can be pulled up, shimmed and re-installed or replaced.

What are my options with the boards that are too tall? Obviously, with only 5/16” thickness to start with, sanding them down runs the risk of having nothing left for the nail…

Should I pull the “tallest” boards and try a different one? I also could replace some of the boards with new strips of red oak, but at $1.16 per lineal foot, it starts to add up very quickly.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated!


Thanks,
David

If you mean that some of the strips are thicker than others close by, this is normal for flooring that is being re-used. The area from where the strips come from can make a big difference in how much sanding has worn the boards thickness and when they are mixed randomly when laid into a new floor you will notice they are not as uniform in thickness as new material. It still can make a nice floor.
I use an edger with 50 grit paper to help make the floor even, before the drum sander is used.
Using re-used 5/16 strip flooring is so much more labor intensive than just buying new flooring makes me wonder if there is such a shortage of new material on the market.

Hi Pete,
Thanks so much for this answer! I have been assuming that the individual floor boards are the same thickness, and did not measure them (beyond length) when I installed them. Of course, it makes perfect sense that when the floor boards were installed in their original setting that they were then sanded as part of that installation.

I will pull some of these floor boards to confirm that they are not the same thickness. I do have a thickness planer, if needed.

And to answer the question as to why not start with new boards, I went down that path yesterday. The red oak strip flooring is available locally for $1.16 lf… not bad, until you realize that it is nearly $7/square foot, before installation and finishing. In my case, this fairly modestly sized room would cost about $1,300, just in materials. That is what drove me back to trying to make the reclaimed wood work.

Thanks,
David

What kind of nailer did you use to nail down your flooring? I'm about to redo my living room (250 sq ft) and it's my first time doing this sort of job. Any specific info on the type of nail and tool you used would be helpful.

I was thinking cleats would be nice, but in my research it seems a lot of people use 16 ga brads.

Thanks!

jesse

Origionally the fasteners were called floor brads, one inch long nails that were used in a Cavenaugh which fed the nails into a row so that a hammer could nail and set the nails below the surface as the machine moved across the floor in rows about 7 and a half inches apart. The brads had diamond tips so they spread the grain instead of punching through which helped the boards press together with no gaps, especially at butt-joints.
To use old 5/16th inch thick flooring, There are problems that new flooring does not have. If the flooring is placed face up, the old nail holes will be exposed when sanding the flooring flat as the old putty gets worn off. The 18 gauge brads will hold the flooring down using any pneumatic nailer, but the fasteners will need to be set as they are exposed from the sander.
It is a lot of work to re-use top-nailed flooring in making a good floor.