Your Cart is Empty
Woodworking—even the word sounds intimidating! The fact of the matter is, though, you’ll need a few basic woodworking skills if you’re hoping to DIY your home’s solid hardwood flooringinstallation. It’s unavoidable; no hardwood flooring shipment will come pre-cut to your home’s dimensions, after all!
If the thought of working with a power saw has you sweating, relax; E Hardwoods & Flooring, where you can buy hardwood flooring online, is here to help. Below we’ll dive into a few surface-level skills this installation job will ask of you, as well as discuss how to make learning them as simple and stress-free as possible.
This one’s not so much a skill as a philosophy, but it’s a common piece of wisdom repeated across woodworking crafts, so it bears touching on. “Measure twice, cut once” refers to the fact that wood, once cut, cannot be glued back together (unless you fancy some nasty-looking cracks); before making any cut, then, you should double-check your measurements to make sure you’re thinking clearly.
It’s easy to get “in the zone” while doing a flooring project and start performing repetitive cuts without thinking, so consider taking an approach that requires you to switch up what you’re doing now and again to keep your mind sharp.
This is the biggest, scariest skill for a lot of flooring DIYers—and for good reason. Those teeth are sharp! Rest assured, though, that there are plenty of saw options out there, so you can pick the one that best suits your ability and comfort levels. For a basic flooring installation, some combination of a hand-held jigsaw, a table saw, a circular saw, and a miter saw will do the job.
Know that some saws are much better at making lengthwise cuts than widthwise, and vice versa. Lean into each saw’s strong points, or you could risk messing up a piece of wood—or worse.
There are a seemingly infinite number of ways that one can join two pieces of wood together; joints refer to these methods. While you won’t need to know an extensive number of them for your DIY flooring adventure, knowing how to put two pieces of wood together can save your prefinished hardwood flooring job in a pinch.
