DIY European Oak Floor Installation with Provenza Floors

Whew!  We have hit week 5 of the One Room Challenge and lemme tell ya, the finish line is peeking around the corner.   If you missed the previous weeks posts you can check out those here.  The project, the designs, demo, and wallpaper

My humblest thanks to Linda Weinstein as well as Better Homes and Gardens for the opportunity to share as a featured designer this round, I’m thrilled to be included with the other 19 talented designers.

This week we installed my dream floor, a stunning european oak engineered product with a wire brushed finish.   I am thrilled to share Provenza Floors as my sponsor/partner for this project.  Their flooring is incredible in quality and finish, with a 3mm wear layer and handcrafted wide planks it’s a beautiful product.

I chose to go with their Lugano Collection’s Felice.  The soft gray warmth was the perfect tone to balance out the black trim and white walls in the main area while also playing well with the wallpapers in A and B’s rooms. The perfect mix of cozy, elegant and classic.

That beautiful grain and color, Felice from Provenza

It can be installed in a few ways including glue down, staple and float depending on your existing subfloor.  As per Provenza’s recommendation with our specific type of subfloor, we chose to do a float installation.

*Always be sure to read through through those instructions!  Prior to installation you want to acclimate your new wood floor in the spaces it will be installed for several days.   Thus each space was loaded with several boxes, as we had almost 800 sq ft to install.

The first step after demo and prep (remove all nails, staples, etc) was to lay down an underlayment.  We chose to go with a popular product from Home Depot as based on reviews and availability along with an underlayment tape to secure it together.

We have previously installed wood flooring and learned a few tricks from that project.  One was to start more centrally, we did this for 2 reasons.

1. The cut pieces on the sides would be even on both sides versus one side of the room cut down and one wall a whole row.  2. We were running those first rows across the longest length which was from this wall down the walkway to the opposite wall.  This gives you the nicest sight line and full rows to work from as you move out of the room.

Once you start laying your boards, double check as you go with a tape measure to be sure you’re rows are straight.  If those first couple of rows are off the whole room will be crooked.  We face nailed the first row since we weren’t up against a wall.

Use a floor tapping block with a hammer to tap your boards into place eliminating the gaps.  *Always use the block as you can damage the board if you try to tap it without it.

It’s important to leave a 1/2″ expansion gap when installing for the movement of the wood.  I highly recommend something to act as a spacer to help with this.  We had shims on hand and wedged in the fat end as spacers along the wall.

Take care to keep your boards snug together and the expansion gap intact as you build out your rows.  This goes pretty quickly once you establish your first few rows as a base.

This is the easiest way we have found to deal with doorjambs.  Using an oscillating saw, hold up a scrap piece of unerlayment and flooring to the frame.  Run your saw right along the trim to cut out the base to make room for the flooring.

Here you can see how we ran them out from A’s room.  We used a chalk line to mark from one wall to the other.  This gave us a nice long even run from the wall to wall.

We pulled the underlayment tight as we went, the walkway wanted to get a little bunch-y.

We continued to build our rows and installed the oak flush bullnose trim along the sides of the walkway.  We face nailed the bullnose trim into place to act as a solid end point on either side for the floating floor in the middle.

Here is the walkway completed!  It took a bit more time as it was very crooked on the kitchen side but with some extra attention and finesse we got ‘er done.

Time to branch off into the closets and other bedrooms.  We were able to just expand on what we had already laid down.

Finishing up the last spaces, the final step was to reinstall the trim we removed and painted previously.

An up close shot, this flooring is everything I dreamed it would be and more.  It’s absolutely gorgeous and I want it everywhere, although I don’t think my hubs will appreciate replacing 1500 sq ft of flooring on the main floor haha.

Looking out from A’s room that gorgeous flow of the wood with the subtle grain and how about the pairing with the wallpaper?

What do you think of these Provenza floors?  Would you feel comfortable installing your own flooring?  How about floating vs another method?  I always love to hear from you so hit me up in the comments.

And don’t forget to pop your email into the subscribe box, coming up next week we are installing the new railing to finish up the walkway transformation and you’ll be the first to see it go live!

Be sure to check in with the other featured designers and their projects, so many good things are going on.  And the guest participants projects can be found here, lots of progress is being made!

XOXOXO