I Made My Own Hardwood Floor From Scratch

The day before we actually started to install our homemade hickory hardwood flooring, ironically, I'm sitting down watching an episode of Lumber Capital Log Yard and I'm watching a.k.a. Grandpa Larry install the hardwood flooring that they made from their own trees and he did an excellent job. Now I personally don't know Grandpa Larry but it sounds like we have a few things in common since we're both sawyers. We're both really no spring chickens and for me, I was an installer of hardwood flooring for a large part of my life. So the only last thing I could agree on Grandpa Larry is whether you're a beginner or you're an expert, this is no joke installing hardwood flooring. It's hard on your knees, hard on your back. I just had to have surgery in my hand, Larry, for a long years of doing this kind of work. Today guys we're going to actually show you the difference of taking your homemade hardwood flooring, whether you take it to a company like Storybook Floors or if you want to make your own hickory hardwood flooring like we did in our shop. It doesn't need to be hickory. It could be oak, pine or anything. We decided to do hickory. So a couple of the differences that you're going to have when you're making your own hardwood flooring as opposed to getting it manufactured by a company like Storybook Floors is the end matching. They're going to actually have another tongue and groove piece right here that's going to lock into the other flooring. Additionally if you look at his there's a slight v-groove put on each one of these floorings. Now we know that we're actually going to sand our floor when we're done so we don't actually put the end matching in. We're putting this in more like farm style flooring so it actually takes us a little bit longer to do the installation because if you look this is now our cut room. So we brought in all of the different stock that we have made and Jason is actually squaring off cutting off all the bad ends to get the most usable wood because we've made each every one of these pieces. I mean I cut this tree, replaned this tree, reprocessed this wood and now we're installing it. So I'm in love with this little piece. I love it. He does love it. So the installation for us is going to be a little bit longer because we have to do some cutting. I'll show you how we actually glue the ends together and then the floor is going to get sanded and finished but that's what we got. So some of the cool things about actually processing all of your own wood, your flooring, your cabinets, your material is that we use this Hickory Ambrosia Beetle to give us that crazy rustic look in our kitchen. I'll show you a link in the description about how we actually made these cabinet doors, the frames, and even all of the old cabinets that you see. But the beautiful beautiful part of this is how you're able to customize your projects and actually blend everything together because we also took some Ambrosia Hickory that we had Ambrosia Beetle, turned it into the flooring. So now my kitchen, my whole house is going to blend together and randomly we have put pieces in that's going to blend this kitchen, this flooring together and not only did we do the floor we made some v-groove out of it as well. So we're using portions of our wall, portions of our floor, portions of our door, all with our same Hickory hardwood flooring that we made. So when we're finished you'll see the blend together and how cool this project can be. Now try getting that out of store but there you go that's how we do it. You're not getting out of store. You're not getting it out of store Jack. So like Grandpa Larry we actually are using the rosin paper because we don't have a moisture issue but we're up on the second floor of the carriage house and our sub floor is actually chestnut oak. It's the tongue and groove ceiling from down below so it was important for me to use the right size nails so that the nails wouldn't puncture through our finished ceiling downstairs. So our inch and a half nails work perfectly and let me tell you between going into the Hickory and into the oak this stuff is down. So just important to know that if you're not doing under a basement and there's a finished floor if you get the nails too long good chance you're going to poke through. So there you go. So just like Grandpa Larry I actually use the staples more often but here are actually the peg nails that go into a floor nailer and this Hickory is hard, super hard. Now I don't exactly know what wood they were using over there but I think it was oak and occasionally with these staples you're putting two pins in with this super hard wood there's a chance that it could crack the tongue. So if you're getting a lot of cracks using the staples use the nails. Jason and I nailed down a bad piece before and let me tell you it took us a little bit to get it pried off so either way these nails actually stick. They stick. They stick. Out of all the work that we've done to make this floor get it to the process this is really the hardest part and the hardest part is is because you're up and down I'm on my knees and we're not young but ours is very similar to theirs. I'll get very started on the one end. Normally what I'll do is I'll bring a block in and I'll start to fit my pieces so that you actually don't ruin your tongue with the nail. So there. There we have my pieces set. Now we're using a pneumatic gun. Back in the old days we didn't have pneumatic guns. We had to hand drive each one of these in individually. So honestly with my flooring and the flooring that I use I actually give this a hit because you're actually not driving the nail in the impact there so I give it a whack. It drives this stuff right in. How's your back Dan? My back is sore. Now this is actually the morning of day three. I was super excited to get this project started and by here I was already telling Jay I was ready for the project to be done but we motored through it and we're going to get this done. So I am just gluing my end tabs right here which is going to seal everything. So I'm going to just tap everything in. Gonna get my block. Back up on my feet again. There we go. Going into play. Now this hammer specially designed for flooring you see this angle right here gives me a chance to tap my end and you actually when you learn to swing it you're not touching the top of your wood you're hitting the bottom. So what I'm doing you see the glue popping out here we're super tight. So that's really all that we do to get our ends put together and then another series of nails. Make sure you drive them in. I know this hammer's heavy. You don't want to swing it all day. You don't want squeaky floors. Boom. That's it. Goes to the next. So while Jay's in the back cutting straight and me getting the next pieces I'm actually stuck installing all day. So it's just glue, fitting pieces, making sure everything's tight. I get the easy job. It's not easy Jay. I don't want to get too crazy. I step usually on my two ends. Boom. In she goes. These are snug. Now as I showed you in my video when we're making them our tongues are slightly round so it actually makes it a little bit easier for it to go in. Gives it a place to line it up. Just make sure you're snug. Glue's popping out. You're good to go. I start from this side and I will drive in and move them in. And all of this my friends is underneath the cabinet. There you go. That's how we install them and I just start with the next piece. Hopefully Jay and I are working at the same speed. It starts. Take my block. It's in there guys. So here we are. We're going to drive this last boom tight and that's it guys. One after the other after the other. I know everybody wants hard food floors and it is definitely definitely when you're finished in a week or two when you're feeling better a couple of tubs of Advil you're going to love this floor because it's totally worth it. The last little tip that I have for you installing the floor is to buy one of these flooring presses. I mean they're 25 bucks. I mean I'm not this is a cutterex but there's 20 of them on Amazon and actually you get to your end wall where you can't this bad boy will crush. So that's how you get your last pieces in. But this thing if you actually have a warp board or something we've actually used this to press in a bunch of our TNG for our siding walls keeps all your joints tight cheap and easy. I think we've actually used this thing to jack up my truck as well so that's all I can say. It's multifunctional if you can think about it. We like multifunctional. Hey guys as you know we're always always a building rustic and I do not have my self-made multi-million dollar machine but you see we have the same saw cut blades as made by the storybook floors and we don't really have we have a not a shop that we produce hardwood flooring we only make our own products but how we actually achieve this is actually when we're cutting our wood we know we want a certain amount that are going to have these marks in them and they're sporadically around they're not all over the place. We take our sawmill we'll bend a couple of our blades and we'll make a piece that has deeper grooves into it so when we're planing it we'll look at it we're doing these pieces individually so Jay and I will stop boom we know that that's going on. Now I know this floor is going to get sanded it's not going to get sanded to take that out all the way unless you wanted to I do not so boom marks marks marks sporadically so they're not just in my floor they're in my wood they're in my beams it's just a little touch of the old world. Okay guys Jason and I have a few more pieces to install and yeah we got to finish off the cut room but next week we're going to show you actually how we sand finish this and actually get it ready to be moved in and I wanted to put out a special thanks to the folks over at Lumber Capital Log Yard especially aka Grandpa Larry for the installation that they did of their own hardwood flooring and it was the best Christmas gift that you could give anybody so guys thanks for watching we'll see you on the next one.