Parquet Floor Installation Guide

Parquet flooring is a classics - it brings style and luxury to any interior. It allows various designs of fitting and it can also accommodate additional elements such figures, borders and edging of a different type of wood.

Having parquet floors installed however is not as easy as having other type of wooden floors installed.

Getting Started

The first step of planning your parquet floors will be choosing the design and respectively the size of the blocks you will require. Going for a square tiles fitting for example will require block size, which can set a square by being put together. The herringbone parquet fitting can go with almost any fixed length parquet blocks.

The planning of the parquet floors will include choosing the wood for the blocks, or we can also say the number of woods, if the design we are after is more sophisticated. The popular choice is oak parquet flooring.

If we go for a fitting without a specific design, choosing herringbone for the pattern, we may not strictly go for bordering the floors. We can let them go from wall to wall, which is of course personal choice.

Some other patterns, however definitely go better with a border around, which is again choice for you to make. The boarder may comprise of 1, 2 or 3 blocks and can include and expansion gap between the border and the rest of the floor filled with a cork strip (moving the expansion gap off the walls may be a good point for future floor works). The border can also accommodate a darker (walnut, wenge or merbau) strip - 1 cm wide, which can be obtain from most hardwood floors and add some more character to you rooms.

Subfloors Preparation

The subfloor is the most important bit of the floor preparation. The aspects which have to be looked at are the level of the subfloor and the amount of moisture concentration or possibility of such appearing on later stage.

Installation of parquet floors on top of wooden subfloors is usually carried out by installation of additional layer of ply to level the floors. It is important however, floors below to be inspected and refitted before proceeding with the ply. Sometimes works on a joist may be required.

Installation of parquet floors on top concrete floors can be done either straight onto the subfloors (not recommended) or on top of ply layer again. The ply layer however, needs to be fixed into the floors, which in case of running pipe connections into the subfloors might be an issue to bear in mind.

Installation of Fixed-Length Parquet Blocks

Probably the best product to use out there for adhesive in the installation of parquet wood floors will be the saline based adhesive. A flexible adhesive which have the perfect qualities and guarantees your floors will breathe normally during the seasons due to its elasticity and without losing its strong qualities during the years will be
the Bona R850 Flexible Adhesive. Other brands with quality adhesives for parquet floors include Kerakoll, Lecol and Wakol.

 

Things the parquet floor fitter will bear in mind before proceeding with installation:

• Any floor works should not start immediately after decoration works
• Make sure the floor base is damp free or damp protected.  
• Leave the flooring to acclimatise with room atmosphere at least 2 days before the works