Wood floors can indeed add a touch of charm, elegance and why not, luxury to any home. Wood floors come from ancient times and it is one of the most used types of flooring. Especially pine floors are magnificent and like a precious piece of furniture, it becomes more beautiful and valuable over time.
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Therefore, if you like the feel and look of wood, wide pine floorboards is an exciting and attractive option. It will definitely transform your home with its rich glow and soft patina not to mention that it is pretty easy to install.
However when it comes to installing a pine flooring, there are several things to consider.
Wide Pine Floorboard Acclimatization
Using 10-in wide pin boards will create a great, astonishing kind of flooring with an antique look but may also lead in time to gaps between those wide floorboards that will open and close seasonally. Therefore, it is critically to acclimatize the floorboards prior installation. In fact a properly acclimatization of the wood boards is the secret to a perfect floors.
– Stack your floorboards in a large pile;
– Place wood spacers between the floorboard layers;
– Point any kind of household fan (at low speed) on the floorboards to accelerate drying;
– Mark with chalk 3 or 4 pieces that you measure accurately;
Even if the pine floorboards seem dry, they need to be completely dried and stable to the specific conditions of humidity and temperature of the room.
Allow time to dry, a week or perhaps more and measure your marked boards. They shrink measurably in this time and when the process stops you can be sure the wood is completely dried and won’t shrink after flooring installation.
With the risk to repeat myself, I want to mention again the importance of drying, in the process of installing a wooden floor, especially when installing wide floorboards.
Wide Pine Floorboard “Drawbacks”
However, even with an properly dried wood, you should expect that your 10-in wide floorboards to manifest seasonal gaps over time. No matter, how well the floor is installed, these gaps between boards will open and close according to the changes of temperature and humidity in the room. Wood obviously will expand during an increased humidity, which will lead to an increasing pressure on the board edges. This usually happens in winter when we dealing with high humidity in the house. During the summer, wood shrinks due to dryness, which will cause these gaps that are in fact, unavoidable and their size depends on the width of the planks.
Regardless of the floorboard width, the amount of contraction and expansion is equal across the entire surface but if your boards are narrower, the gaps will be proportionally, smaller.
Wide Pine Floorboard Installation
For a proper installation, you have several options. If you insulate with extruded polystyrene foam, which is quite rigid, beneath your pine flooring and on top of the subfloor then you should place plywood sheets on top of the polystyrene foam to create a solid and even surface on which you can fasten your boards.
Another option, which is simpler and easier, is to apply a coat of spray foam to the floor structure underside. In this way, you can fasten your pine boards straightly to the existing subfloor. However, this solution is valid only if you have full access to the crawlspace for a proper spray all over.
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