Red oak flooring is beautiful. Engineered floor treatments are incredibly beneficial. It only makes sense to combine the two and install red oak engineered flooring. We have already gone into detail into the reasons to consider investing in an engineered floor in a past post. So, let’s just jump into why red oak is so appealing.
Red Oak Flooring Benefits
Red oak has a larger range of possible hues when compared to white oak. Everything from red to light brown with a darker grain colour is available as option. This is because there are more than 200 red oak species.
Red oak floor boards stain well, very well. This is because it is very porous unlike white oak. This gives you even more colour options (in case you felt you didn’t have enough already).
Tongue and Groove Installation Method
We explained in a past post the uniclic way of installing engineered floors. For this article, we will cover the tongue and groove method of installation.
This is because being breathable, the engineered red oak planks will expand or shrink depending on increases or decreases in moisture content. The tongue-and-groove method also allows the floor to rise from the subfloor and exist in a floating manner.
With the basics out of the way, let’s discuss installation.
DIY is Easy with the Tongue-and-Groove Method
- Read the moisture content of the subfloor in the room you have chosen. Make sure to only start installation of the top floors once the wet construction is over.
- Red oak varieties can be installed on both wood and concrete subfloors. In case it’s a wooden subfloor, the moisture content should be 16% or less. For concrete subfloor, the moisture content should not exceed three pounds per thousand square meters.
- Once this is done, place an underlayment.
- Next, you will need adhesive. Keep spacer bars along the side of the wall from where you want to begin the installation. This induced gap will allow the red oak planks to expand without splitting up. Take two planks and place glue at the width of one and fix it along the width of another.
- Keep the groove side facing the wall, i.e. the tongue side must be placed faced away from the wall. Continue in this manner to complete the first row until you reach the bottom. Here, at maximum circumstances, the area left is small compared to the length of the plank.
- Mark the extra portion and cut it off. Now affix this trimmed piece with the one above and complete the first row. As for the second row, place some adhesive on the groove side of the plank taken and stick it with the tongue of the plank in the first row.
- Continue to make rows until you come to the other side of the room. Here again you may face the issue of constrained space. Trim of the excess plank in the similar manner and complete installing red oak engineered planks.
That’s all there is to it. Just continue the process until you have covered the area where you want the flooring.
Enjoy your new red oak engineered floor and remember to give plenty of love and attention to keep it looking its best!
