Do-it-yourself wooden floors in the apartment

Overhaul in the apartment involves a complete replacement of communications and finishing materials. Old floors are also recommended to be dismantled and changed. Replacing the wooden floor in the apartment, you can do it yourself, without resorting to the services of finishers. In this case, you can be 100% confident in the quality of the work done. The whole process can be divided into two stages: preparatory and main. To make it more clear, we should dwell on each in more detail.

Training

Replacing the floor begins with an estimate and the purchase of the necessary material. First you need to calculate the area of ​​the room. It is best to arm yourself with a tape measure and measure the area of ​​the room yourself, not trusting the technical passport of the apartment. After that, the resulting numbers must be multiplied by the thickness of the board. This will allow you to calculate the required cubic capacity of lumber. Having determined the quantity, you can go to the construction market. To replace the wooden floor in the apartment, some boards will not be enough. Still need waterproofing, skirting boards and floor logs.

For the manufacture of flooring, there are two types of lumber:

• Edged board. Classic board, processed on the front side. This material is mainly used for private households.
• Gender rail. This is the best option for apartment buildings. Reiki are convenient for DIY installation. Parts of the floor are fastened together in a lock (groove-protrusion), which greatly simplifies the work.

In both cases, it is recommended to give preference to sawn timber from pine. The same applies to lags. Laga is a bar with a section of 50x50 or 50x70, they are installed on a concrete coating.

To install a wooden floor in the apartment, you need skirting boards. They come in two varieties: plastic and wooden. Plastic skirting is much more practical in terms of DIY installation. In addition, it is more durable and stronger than wooden counterparts.

Advice! To install plastic skirting boards in the apartment, you will have to buy an additional element (internal and external corners) and screws for attaching to the wall.

Regardless of the type of material, skirting boards have a standard size of 2.5 meters. Take this point into account when making an estimate.

Absolutely any insulation material with water-repellent properties is suitable for waterproofing. The most practical and inexpensive is a regular roofing material. The waterproofing is fixed with screws or dowels-nails.

Installation process

Do-it-yourself installation of wooden floors in the apartment begins with the dismantling of the old coating. To do this, you need a small crowbar or mount. Dismantling of an old floor begins with a plinth. After that, the old wooden floors are torn off together with the lags. Old waterproofing must also be discarded.

After that, you can proceed to installation. First of all, it is necessary to note the level at which the new floor will be located.

Advice! If replacement of the coating occurs throughout the apartment, it is better to perform the work in stages. First, dismantle the floors in one room. Mark the new floor, spend along the edge of the old.

The mark can be applied with chalk or a marker on the wall of the room.

• To prevent flooring creaking and not bending, it is necessary to check the evenness of the floor slab. To do this, you can use a laser pointer or a building level. If necessary, the floor slab is leveled using cement-sand mortar or special linings.
• After leveling, a waterproofing layer is laid on the concrete base.

• Logs are stacked. Doing it yourself is quite simple, the main thing is to accurately maintain the distance between the lags. The layout of the lag is as follows: between the extreme lags should be no more than 30 centimeters, the distance between subsequent bars can vary from 50 to 60 centimeters.

Important! The lags should be perfectly aligned, the location of the floor in the apartment will depend on this. Therefore, after installation, it is recommended to level the lags.

• Sharp side faces are recommended to smooth out a plane.
• You can proceed with the installation of the wooden floor. The boards should be laid “butt”, the gap between them should be absent or minimized. It is much easier to connect genital rails with your own hands. They interlock with each other by a groove-to-protrusion connection. For a more reliable connection, the slats are knocked down with a wooden hammer.
• After this, the boards can be attached to the logs using nails or self-tapping screws. Only the caps on the fastening material must be bitten. The fact is that after installation, wooden floors are usually sanded, and protruding hats can damage the grinder.

• Before sanding floors, all gaps and scratches must be puttied. Putty needs time to dry, usually it takes no more than a day. It is recommended to grind the wooden floor in the apartment twice: first with a large sandpaper, then with a fine one. After each pass, it is recommended to wipe the floors with a damp cloth.

• After grinding, the baseboard is installed. Remember that this applies only to wood products. Wooden skirting boards are painted and varnished with the floor. Plastic skirting boards are usually purchased and installed after finishing floors.

Finishing the floor in the apartment with your own hands

Wooden floors are usually painted or varnished. Despite the similarity of work processes, they are carried out according to different technologies.

• Painting. Floor painting begins with priming. For this, a primer is purchased for wooden surfaces. This tool provides reliable adhesion of the paint to the surface. After applying the primer, it is necessary to allow time to dry. This may take 1 to 24 hours. Then you can start painting. Do it in several layers. Each subsequent layer is applied only after the previous one dries. For uniform distribution of paint over the surface, it is recommended to use a paint roller.
• Application of varnish. Lacquering the floor in the apartment with your own hands is not as difficult as it seems at first glance. First, a preliminary layer is applied, it must dry for 12 hours, then it is treated with a sandpaper and wiped with a damp cloth. After that, the floor is varnished again.

Important! To completely harden the varnish, you need at least a week. Up to this point, you can’t walk on the floor in high heels, install massive items or move furniture. This will damage the coating.

The process of changing floors in an apartment is not so complicated, so it’s quite realistic to do everything yourself.

Instead of a conclusion, you can give beginners some useful tips:

• work is recommended at room temperature;
• between the end of the board and the wall, it is recommended to leave a small gap;
• when purchasing lumber, it is recommended to give preference to products that are saturated with an antiseptic and non-combustible composition;
• if the floor in the apartment will be varnished, it is better to purchase a material for finishing based on polyurethane.

If all the work is done according to the rules, the wooden floors in the apartment can last more than a dozen years.