Particle board subfloors aren’t always great under hardwoods – especially when you buy nail-in flooring like we did. Some folks install right over it without any issues while other folks have big problems down the line. Because it’s so unpredictable, hardwood manufacturers void the warranty if you install them that way – which was definitely not a risk we were willing to take. According to our initial research, we were left with three not-so-hot options.
- Return the meant-to-be-nailed flooring and buy a meant-to-be-floated floor instead. But after falling hard for the one we picked and our adventure getting it home, we weren’t eager to take it back. Especially since none of the floating options were as close of a match to our existing wood stairs and hardwoods downstairs.
- Remove the particle board subfloor to (hopefully) reveal plywood underneath. This would’ve been time-intensive (the particle board was laid under all of the door jambs and everything) and it would’ve lowered the level of the floor (making door heights and transitions into the bathrooms weird). It would also cause us to lose the sound deadening effect that this particle board was installed to create in the first place. And we definitely didn’t want a loud and echo-ey floor upstairs.
- Install plywood right over the particle board. This was most the promising option, except that it too would’ve been time intensive, would’ve raised the floors (requiring us to cut down all of the doors and live with a noticeably high top step of the stairs). It would also carry an extra material cost.
- It has a lifetime warranty, and is guaranteed to last as long as the hardwoods
- It’s elastic, so it stretches along with your boards during seasonal changes in temperature (this helps to prevent cracking, gapping, or warping)
- We only needed an exacto knife to install it, which saved us the expense of buying or repeatedly renting a nailer (although we were a little sad not to get to try one)
- It’s non-toxic, has no-VOCs, and no odor – which is great considering it’s an adhesive product
Laying the first row is a tricky step, since it sets the tone for how straight your entire floor will be. And you can’t always trust your drywall to be straight. So we started building our floor using some of the longest, straightest boards we could find to help overcome any curves in the wall. Oh, and those are scrap wood spacers against the wall that help leave an expansion gap around the edge (for when changes in temperature may make the floor expand).
Another thing that helped us feel more confident about our first row being straight was laying it across as long of a wall as possible. For us, this meant taking our first row all the way out into the hallway. Which also meant rough-setting a lot of boards before anything was actually ever stuck down – just to make sure they didn’t look wonky.
Once we felt good about our first few rows being straight, it was time to permanently secure them in place. Here’s where that extra flap of plastic comes in handy. You pull on it slowly so that it exposes the sticky Elastilon beneath the floor boards, so the bottom of the boards can be joined to the underlayment, permanently holding them in place.
Once those boards touch the Elastilon, boy are they stuck. It takes a good yank (and sometimes even a pry) to get them loose. So that makes us feel good about the long term hold of this stuff!
From there, it was pretty much the same process – lay a couple rows, bang them in tightly, peel back the plastic so they’re secured, and move on. Laying the boards was just like any floor – the boards have a tongue and groove that slide together, and we used a rubber mallet to tap them snugly into place.
We also used a bit of wood glue on the groove at the end of each plank as suggested, just to further secure everything.
Oh and we periodically taped the boards together, which was also recommended – just to discourage slipping or shifting during the install. If there are two of you working on this project, one person might grab boards, run a bead of glue along the end grove (seen above), and hand them to the other person who’s clicking them in and hammering them into place. The person on glue duty can also pull the Elastilon every few rows and toss down some tape as you go. That’s the grove that Sherry and I got into (and every few hours we switched jobs to keep from getting too sore/tired).
The result? A super tight gap-less floor that will still flex with fluctuations in temperature without cracking or warping – and it should outlast us. Huzzah!
Except… as simple as the process was, it still was not a quick process. I think our bedroom took us 10 hours to tackle together (across two days) while my parents watched Clara. Granted it was the largest room and it was our first one, but boy did it not inspire much confidence in how quickly this could get done.
As is the DIY way, there are always little curve balls. For example, we originally had hoped to not have to remove our baseboards. But when we looked at things more closely, losing 3/4″ of the baseboard behind the floor made them look dorky-short. And we learned that neither quarter round alone (nor baseboards alone) would cover the expansion gap that our hardwoods required in order to keep the warranty in tact. So we pried all of our baseboards up and resigned ourselves to later having to reinstall them with quarter round. Le sigh. At least they’re already painted so we’ll just have a few small touch ups to take care of.
The good news is that we made lots of progress over the long weekend and yesterday evening we finally finished. We even got around to adding the baseboards back and placing the quarter round in most of the rooms already. The floors are looking awesome and feeling super solid.
So much better than the carpet.
More Flooring Projects
If you would like to read about other flooring projects we’ve done, please check out the posts below:
Sarah @makingitmyhome.blogspot.com says
the floors look incredible. the first thing we did was rip up the 1970’s carpet and have hard wood installed. i suggest for a fun date night (albeit a little messy) is to sprinkle some baby powder along the hallway and then go for a sock-slip and slide!
Jennifer Sanford says
Sherry and John,
I have been fighting with ugly carpet in my master bedroom for about 3 years. I have finally bit the bullet and decided to expand the hardwood floors into the master bedroom. I have looked in several different locations and found the best match at Home Depot, which thankfully, is also the least expensive option. My question is, how do I get an even deeper discount? Is there a coupon code or a time of year where flooring at Home Depot goes on sale?
Thanks! And I love your blog. I discovered it in 2010 while I was deployed and have been a daily reader ever since!
Jenna
YoungHouseLove says
If you open a Home Depot credit card I think they give you 10% off the whole purchase, which might be nice! Or if you already have on, just say “will you match the 5% off that Lowe’s gives people for using their credit card?” and they’ll say yes and scan a code to give you 5% off (but you have to then use your HD card). Hope it helps!
xo
s
Mia B says
J&S, I’ve been re-reading all your flooring posts because we are getting ready to order our new wood floor. Now that you have lived with your Elastilon floors a while, I wonder if they feel solid to you?
You know how nailed down floors feel so solid and sturdy? And floating floors can be hollow sounding? How do you think Elastilon rates in between those two extremes and how is it on noise-deadening for the transfer of sound between upstairs/downstairs?
Oh, and how many square feet is your upstairs? We’re doing the entire second floor and using your timeline as a guide to how many vacation days we will have to use. (Ha, ha, ho ho, vacation!)
YoungHouseLove says
Let’s see, I think we laid about 800 square feet of it and its nice and solid feeling (and very quiet) but we hear that a lot of that has to do with your subfloor (if it flexes or creaks or isn’t level it can feel bouncy or sound hollow). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Mia B says
Excellent, thank you for the info! Sounds like we are going to split our project into two phases. We’re doing about 1400-1500 sf on a second-story concrete subfloor, which is already really good at sound-deadening with the current carpet, so think the Elastilon will be a great choice if it feels solid underfoot.
We’ve also found a special unfinished, engineered wood to use in our situation. The bottom layers are engineered so they play nice with our concrete and changing moisture/humidity/etc. in a slab and it’s very uniform and square so should be easier to fit together for a novice who isn’t using nails to help bend bowed wood into place, and the top layer is solid wood and able to be refinished as many times as solid 3/4″ plus will give us that really “traditional” strip flooring look with square edges and the depth of color from a site finish that we loved in our previous 1960 ranch.
Between the Elastilon, the unfinished engineered wood, and our current search for water-based, low-odor stain and finish, we feel like we’re combining all the latest technological bells and whistles to hopefully create a perfect floor for us! We’d hired someone before to go the regular refinishing route (and just like you, I was driven out of the house to sleep on my Dad’s couch for a week but DH did sleep in the house in the dead of winter with the heat blasting and the windows open. I’m sure he sacrificed some brain cells to the cause!) and we’ve laid floating floors at my in-laws, and we’ve sanded and poly’d a rental house’s floors — so I say we’ve got just enough experience to be dangerous. I will report back here when we get our project going because I find your blog posts and all the comments SO HELPFUL as we start dreaming and planning our renovations! I’ve read all nine pages of comments on this post!
You are much appreciated in our household! Thanks again!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, good luck Mia!!
xo,
s
Pete's Hardwood Floors says
Beautiful, and good pick with the solid oak! American hardwoods are so lovely. Way to install them yourself! A lot of people are scared of this. Of course, the whole point of your blog is to do everything yourself… but still.
Take good care of those babies for years to come, okay?! Here’s a helpful checklist if you need one :) http://www.peteshardwoodfloors.com/Wood-Floor-Techniques-101/floor-maintenance.html
Heather says
Where did you buy the wood?? What is the name, color etc… We are going to put in some new floors and love what you all have done. Congrats, on your new baby to be :)
YoungHouseLove says
There’s a link in that sentence a few paragraphs down that says “As we’ve mentioned here” and that “here” is a link (it’s blue) to a post with that info. Hope it helps!
xo
s
Sarah says
Your beautiful floors appear to run seamlessly from room to room. That is, the boards from the hallway look like they continue straight into the bedrooms. If so, do you have a special trick for getting everything to line up that way? We’re installing floors as I type.
I should probably hope you don’t answer this for ages because you’re enjoying a much-deserved holiday with your kiddo.
Thanks for your fun and beautiful site!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Sarah! This post hopefully helps to explain that a bit more for you! You can see that we started (on day one, as marked in yellow on the graphic in that post) with the hallway, so that everything would line up with that and we could expand from that part into all the other rooms. Hope it helps!
xo
s
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LJ Grimm says
I had no idea you installed the floors yourself. IMPRESSIVE! MOST IMPRESSIVE!
Lesley says
Your ability to find innovative products and try them out has saved my bacon (…mmmm… bacon) I don’t know how many times.
We are prepping the old Victorian for sale and started 3 months ago with a long list of things we were going to get done to max out the sale price… we are now within 3 weeks of needing to list it and, well, now we are realising the list will never get done and focusing on what could detract from the lovely that she is.
I was scratching my head about what to do with the rest of our basement floor – it had really sad looking carpeting that we pulled up to discover LEAD PAINT!!! We covered the actively used area of the floor with vinyl tiles, but never got to all of it and just covered the rest with carpet remnants. That issue could be a huge problem for buyers so we needed a quick, neat way to get the job finished. Lo and behold I remembered the membrane you used here for the floors…. and wouldn’t you know, some quick Googling resulted in finding out that there is an equivalent product for vinyl composite tiles! Elastilon Super Lock.
I love you so hard right now!!!!
YoungHouseLove says
So glad Lesley! All the best of luck!
xo
s
Judith says
Hi Sherry and John,
Is your floor still holding up nicely?
We will be installing our floors next month, so I’d love to hear if you are still happy with the Elastilon.
It is always such a pleasure to check what you are up to! :)
All the best to you guys, and kind regards from Germany!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Judith! They still look like they did when we installed them, so we’re happy with that! I think they’d feel even more solid and wouldn’t have any flex if we had nailed them in (they’re a little softer underfoot, which is both a perk for the knees/back but also feels a little less “real” sometimes) but they have definitely held up well for us.
xo
s
Judith says
Thanks so much for sharing your hands-on experience Sherry!
Most of the feedback about Elastilon is posted pretty much right after installation, so it is great to know how it has been holding up in the long haul for you! Flooring is a huge commitment after all, so really, many thanks!
Jeanette says
I was researching Elastilon and found your site. Like you, we discovered particle board under the old carpet. However, people from LL gave us another option of gluing the padding over particle board then gluing the solid wood on the padding. I was just curious why you did not go wwith this route. Isn’t this way more cost effective than Elastilon and floor will feel more like they were nailed in?
Thanks a lot…
YoungHouseLove says
That sounds awesome! Our LL didn’t recommend that method to us, and in all of our particle board research we never read about that method, but if it works and you have seen others do it with success (and it doesn’t void the flooring warranty) I’d go for it!
xo
s
Jeanette says
Did some more research and did not see anybody gluing to particle board so we used Elastilon. So far we have done 4 bedrooms and more to go…hallway, LR, DR and kitchen. So far we are happy with the way it came out but still worried about long term. If I’m not mistaken, you have done yours a year ago. How are they holding up? Thanks a lot for the info and I just want to mention that you have a beautiful family!!!
YoungHouseLove says
They still are holding up well! Sometimes they feel less solid than a floor that’s nailed down if that makes sense, but in general we are happy with them.
xo
s
Summer says
Hi, I know this post is old, but I wanted to ask you how do you feel now about living with wood floors on the 2nd level? Do you find that its noisy with kids running around (I know Teddy, is not running yet, but boy will he!). I’m concerned that I’ll be ready to pull my hair out with toddler running upstairs over my head.
YoungHouseLove says
We don’t wear shoes inside so I really think that helps! Between that and having area rugs in bedrooms (and even a padded runner on the stairs) and the underlayment that we used, it’s not any louder than the old carpeting – although I’m sure it would be if shoes/heels were in play up there ;)
xo
s
Sarika says
We are planning to have hardwood floors installed in our new home, and of course I turned to you guys for some of my background research. I’m curious about how you installed the baseboards & quarter round. Why did you opt to install the floor first, and then the baseboard & quarter round on top, rather than the baseboard first, then hardwood, then quarter round to finish it off? Thanks for the help!
YoungHouseLove says
We wanted our baseboards to look as tall as possible, so by doing them after the hardwoods they were 3/4″ taller.
xo
s