We had bought some Virginia Millworks 1/2 thick hand scraped engineered nail down flooring for our kitchen. I had asked the guy at Lumber Liquidators where we bought it from if I needed to take the flooring out of the boxes to let it acclimate and he said no, that I could leave it in the boxes. When we got it home all we did was remove the plastic wraping from the boxes and then let the boxes sit side by side, not stacked, in the kitchen. We don't have a lot of space to leave the flooring out anyway. I then got sick for a while so everything sat in the kitchen as we left it for 3 weeks. I'm better and ready to lay it down this weekend but I just read that if I don't have a moisture meter to test the moisture content then I should lay the flooring out of the packaging for 7 days. Should I still do that or do you think having the flooring resting 3 weeks in unsealed cardboard boxes is fine? It's going down over a raised wooden sublfoor with red rosin paper, if it matters. Thanks in advance.
You should be fine. Moisture testing is generally done for new construction since subflooring can be exposed to the weather and it will take a long time to dry properly.Unless of course your floor has been exposed to these conditions,which I don t think so..The only thing I would ve done was to open the boxes, but thats generally done when acclamating the wood for a 72 hr time frame.Rosin paper is fine.. As far as cleats or staples are concerned, that should be check w/ the manufacturer. Staples are now usually ok from the makers , but make sure 1st, you don t want to void your warranty. The length of the staple will be specified too. To drive staples there are 2 types of guns you can use.The stand up and drive them in or a special trigger type gun that you are on your knees and shoot them in. This is the method I prefer w/ the engineered wood since its easier to set the wood in place and staple. Don t forget a 10$ pair of knee pads. Any other questions you can e mail me thru my avatar GL
