A Woman, a Power Saw
And a New Wood Floor

Laying a new wood floor certainly isn't the simplest do-it-yourself project. But the home-improvement industry is angling to make it easier with engineered products that look and feel like solid hardwood but don't require tons of expertise to install. It's all part of a broader trend to make projects faster and more doable for homeowners who feared tackling such handiwork in the past. From ready-made paint finishes that mimic suede and plaster to surprisingly chic peel-and-stick carpet squares that require only a knife to install, the aim is injecting new life into the $133 billion fix-up market.

Leading the trend are "floating floors" -- planks with a prefinished, real wood veneer that don't need nails, or even glue in the newest applications, and can be placed over old flooring and walked on immediately. To make this possible, manufacturers have been refining a tongue-and-groove construction that locks planks together so they "float" above rather than being attached directly to the floor underneath.

Notably, a big selling point for these floors is they can be installed atop many existing materials, including unsightly tile, linoleum or concrete, and come in wood types like maple, oak and walnut for as little as around $2 to $4 a square foot.

For me, this supposedly easier approach sounded great, if it would work. As a new homeowner, I'd been tackling some smaller projects myself, and had found unexpected satisfaction in these odd jobs. And there's a certain empowerment in learning to talk shop -- after all, what woman hasn't wondered whether workers jack up estimates because they assume we don't know better?

Two years of reading This Old House and umpteen visits to the hardware store later, I was finally gaining a little fix-it confidence. It didn't mean I had to do everything myself, but at least I might have some choice, the way knowing how to cook gives you liberty to stay in or eat out.

Now I was ready to take on floating floors. "Wall-to-wall in a DIY weekend," teased one recent magazine cover. Sounded good, but for me so far, a major project had been replacing light switches. Flooring meant using saws, and while the ads showed well-coiffed women fearlessly wielding blades, no instructional video could have prepared me for the first time I rammed a chop saw through a plank.

My test spot was a 30-square-foot guest-bathroom floor with outdated, corpse-gray tile that I didn't want to chisel up. While wood floors aren't typically recommended for wet areas, I chose this space for a practice run, knowing I could easily remove it later if it deteriorated. Professionals had laid floating floors in two adjacent rooms, and so far, the shiny factory-applied aluminum-oxide coating had held up.

There were some drawbacks. For instance, the thin wood veneer of these floating floors can't be sanded and refinished as many times as solid wood planks, and I'd felt some squishiness in spots where the old floor hadn't been totally flat. What's more, the engineered planks didn't have quite the same natural appearance as my solid nailed-down oak planks upstairs. Still, they were close enough and supposedly could be installed by a do-it-yourself neophyte.

That's what I was after as I headed to my local lumberyard. But there I hit an early obstacle in the form of a salesman named Rick. "This is no insult in any shape or form," Rick said, looking me up and down and pausing, it seemed, at my manicured nails and pearls. "But have you ever used a chop saw or jigsaw?" I shook my head. (I actually didn't know the difference between them.) "But the videos make it look easy," I chirped.

"Look, I'm not saying you can't do it," Rick said. "I'd just have someone around who knows how to use the equipment."

It turns out a chop saw, also called a "miter saw," consists of a circular blade mounted on an arm that you pull down to cut a piece of wood resting on the saw's metal base, while a jigsaw is a handheld tool that can make longer or circular slices.

Humbled but undeterred, I drove to Home Depot, where confidence was restored by a wiry salesman named Jim who assured me that I could easily handle the job and pointed me to the store's new glueless Vanguard "QuikLoc" brand made by Germany's Tarkett Group. Many brands of floating floors can be found at most home-improvement chains, such as Lowe's and Lumber Liquidators, as well as smaller independent lumberyards and Web sites including hardwoodinstaller.com, ifloor.com and diyflooring.com.

Sold, I purchased three cartons of Tarkett's red oak flooring -- nearly 45 square feet, and more than enough to allow for mistakes -- for $176 and a $17 installation kit. I also needed a roll of $25 thin foam sheeting to spread beneath the wood planks for cushioning and to help them "float" above the existing floor. The company also offered an instructional DVD, which seemed thoughtful until I discovered it cost an extra $1.97 at checkout.

Rather than invest in pricey saws I might never use again, I opted to borrow them from my friend Ed Preusser. I also asked Ed to chaperone -- just in case old Rick was right and dismemberment was a possibility.

When we got to work the following Sunday, I was immediately glad to have forked over the two bucks for the DVD because the instructions accompanying the wood were in tiny, trade-lingo-riddled print -- "avoid difficult scribe cuts" -- and the drawings weren't really decipherable.

Using the DVD and a This Old House article as guides, I prepped the floor by making sure it was flat, chiseling out stray grout around the edges and thoroughly vacuuming the tile.

Spreading the foam sheeting was easy enough, but I wanted to confirm how to lay the first board -- tongue facing toward the wall or away? Tarkett had a toll-free number, so I decided to give it a try. That question settled (tongue facing away), I got the first plank in place.

Things got trickier with the second piece, which required measuring and cutting it to the proper length with the chop saw (a.k.a. miter saw). After Ed explained proper placement for my hands in case the wood slipped, I donned protective goggles, grabbed the handle and pressed the blade slowly onto the plank, flinching at the screeching noise and flying sawdust. But after inspecting the severed piece, I felt like a kid who'd just dumped training wheels.

Now I was on my way. Using a hammer and the tapping block from the installation kit, I gently rapped the new piece into place. We continued this process through the room.

I grudgingly thought of Rick when it came time to slice or "rip" the last board to the proper width so it would fit. As I started cutting with the jigsaw, it began jumping wildly, and I stopped, panicked. "What did I do wrong?" I asked Ed, feeling my hands start to sweat.

"Hold it flatter," he instructed, which did the trick.

One part of the job that didn't go smoothly was wedging the last plank into place by the door with the "pull-tool" provided in the installation kit. No matter how much I tugged and pried, it wouldn't squeeze together the way it had so effortlessly on the DVD. Frustrated, I finally gave up and turned to Ed, who used a combination of the pull-tool, a small screwdriver and brute strength to make them join. (Tarkett says such problems are not typical and suggests the tongue might have been swollen on that one board.)

Three hours and $220 from start to finish, and the job was done. The gray tile floor could now rest in peace.

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