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They suffer from a marketing agenda and a lack of real-world experience. Also, new water-borne finishes are getting better every year. DIY flooring is not for the faint-of-heart, and this book will help you make wise choices, and even if you end up contracting your project out, you will be a better informed client after reading it.The only (extremely mild) criticism is that there are new products which post-date the book. Without this book, however, it would be hidden underneath a new carpet right now.Too many DIY books are written by technical writers who work for companies that supply product. I prepared myself for my first hardwoor flooring project by reading this book.
4-disk orbital sanders are FAR safer than the mondo-drums and I used one with great success. It turned out really good (according to my wife). Others are written by some guy who did it the first time, and took pictures to write a book.The author of this book on the other hand, is a real-world practicing professional "floor mechanic" with years of experience. It would be nice to have a new edition with Don Bollinger's current opinion and experience with these products. He has done everything from budget-restorations of FHA-home floors that weren't that good to start with, to state-of-the art projects in high-end homes and public facilities, where money is no object.He is a true artisian.
I believe i paid about 15 dollars total with shipping. I had a hallway, stair bull nosing and a living room on my install with no breaks between. I found it very helpful especially for determining the starting points, and how to measure and or come up with a starting point. I purchased this to learn how to install hardwood floors in my home. The book wont make you a hardwood pro, but will give more than a sufficient foundation to install flooring. Overall its a good book and it is a good purchase to learn and tackle hardwood flooring. Its an older book but the techniques being used today are still the same.
It gives you all of the tips and tricks to do the job properly. Very practical and useful guide to installing a hardwood floor. I would not have had as great a result without it. Well worth the price. If you are installing or thinking about installing a hardwwod floor, get this book.
The subject is covered thoroughly, from choosing lumber types and patterns to types and methods of finishing. This tip wasted two coats and two days of finish work. Maybe the book is a little out of date. On page 111 and perhaps other pages of the Sanding and Finishing chapter of the 1990 edition of the text, the author proposes the use of a floor buffer to fine screen between coats of finish to take the tops off and help successive coats of finish adhere. Ultimately, with the other information in the book, my floor came out great.
I ended up using several one-pint batches of Famowood filler hole-by-hole, which took days because my salvaged hardwood was full of tack holes. One other suggestion the author makes is to mix fine sanding dust with a water-based filler base called Wood Stuff to make perfectly matched filler. The problem was that I couldn't find Wood Stuff or any comparable water-based product online or in any hardware or woodworking store. Overall, this book will give you the information you need to install and finish a new hardwood floor or re-finish an existing hardwood floor as painlessly as possible. What this did for me, even with the finest grit screen available, was leave lots of spider web type scratches in the finish that reflected artificial light in every direction at night, and made what was supposed to be a high gloss polyurethane finish look dull in the daylight. My suggestion is to use a drywall pole-type sander with 220 grit or finer sandpaper and always sand in the direction of the grain. I'm just commenting on the suggested product's availability, here, which is not the author's fault. I wanted the water-based Wood Stuff because I was using a water-based polyurethane to finish.
However, I strongly suggest that one hint made by the author be ignored completely. This method takes much longer than the buffer method, but won't produce the spider web scratches that the buffer does. I just wish I used the floor buffer for the final wood sanding only (not on the finish). I thought that this was a great idea, because you'd get the closest match and you could mix a huge batch of filler right on the floor and trowel the entire space very quickly.
He is a master of his trade and in this book he lays out the very basic and clear steps to a beautiful floor. Once you nail down a wood floor you will realize it's never coming up again. Like most do-it-yourself books this one covers the basic principles and standard practices for the first timer as well as instructions and ideas for the adventurous. Of the four books I checked out from the library on the topic he was pictured and quoted in all of them. Author Don Bollinger stares in, writes, or is quoted in just about every video or book about installing, sanding and finishing hardwood flooring.
What sets this book apart from the others is the focus on common and not so common mistakes that will always result in a expensive disappointment. I came across his video 15yrs ago while researching my first hardwood project. I read this book again before every flooring project and finely I just bought it. That's a bad time to discover you should have read this book first. It takes all the uncertainty (but none of the hard work) out of laying and finishing a hardwood floor.
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