I am making my own hardwood flooring which I’ve never done before. I’m using what’s called “country cherry” which has plenty of character. What sort of edge should I consider putting on this? I have a good router, but no table yet. I could rig a temporary affair, but I want to build one right when I have more time….so figure I’ll be hand routing the edges in as many passes as necessary. I’m doing about 360 bd ft of lumber, say about 550 lineal feet of lumber, which equates to 1100 feet of edge. How many bits will I need? Is tongue and groove the way to go? Is a shiplap effective? Could I just use square edges and get them close, exposed nails would be OK. Are other shallow profiles available. Thanks for any imput. As far as finishing, I’m considering frenchie’s sock skating shellac approach.
I should add that the widths will range from 6″ to 10″, some quartersawn some not. I plan to make a microchamfer along the joints on each side to minimize the visual impact of any cupping etc.
Edited 1/19/2007 11:28 am ET by tuolumne
Replies
I made my bedroom flooring from local pine, and did a toung and groove. It worked very well, but I can't see doing it without a router table. Everything has to be just right. If you put finish on the back side before you put it down, it shouldn't cup. Make sure it is well acclimatized to the room it will be before you put it down.
Pedro
Here's what I did:
I laid two wood floors, both the same technique. One was ash in random widths up to 10 inches. You can go that wide with ash because its very stable when dry, mine was air dried.
I just butted the boards with a small 45deg bevel on the edges. But here's the key. I used bronze ring shanked nails from Jamestown Distributors and I had to pre-drill the boards because the bronze is a little soft but when they are in they are never coming out and they looked great.
The only photo I have of the floor is under this lowboy. There is a dark green section of tile surrounded by a 2" ash border and then a 6" walnut border but you can see a few of the ash boards with the bronze nails.
pins
pins,
I'm in the process of making a cabinet for my A/V equipment and want to adapt a Lowboy, similar to the in the picture. Can you tell where you got the plans for same?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
Kidderville, NH
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob,http://www.furnituredesigns.com/194.htmpins
Tuolumne,
I prepared my hardwoods this way. I did a 1% bevel on all four sides, then put a toung and groove, then some relief channels on the back, about 3/16 deep, very light. If you dont want to face nail the flooring, youll need to put a T&G profile on.
I also agree with the above poster, I think youll need a table. Just get a sheet of 2X4 mdf, center and attach router temporarily, plunge center point, trace around base plate with pencil, remove router, use the base plate from the router to mark holes for the router screws, drill two inch hole in the mdf<depending on the size bit you are using> on the center point you marked, and add a straight edge for a fence and presto, a table. Make two, 1 for each the toung and groove bits.
I think 1 good bit will handle 500 lf. I did more with red oak. I used the Freud T&G, and prepped most material removal on the Table saw.
Good Luck
Joe P
Bob,
Happy that I could be of assistance.
pins
What you're proposing is a recipe for disappointment. I've done this before, also using cherry, and the results were much less than satisfactory. Instead of a router, we used a tablesaw with a dado head, but some of the things we ran into will apply in your case as well.
First, your boards are too wide. 6 to 10 inch cherry boards will shrink up quite a lot over the course of a season's humidity cycles, and you'll see very wide gaps develop between boards. This is one reason why most hardwood strip flooring is milled to 2 1/4 inches wide. If four boards of that width shrink up a total of 3/16's of an inch, the gaps are spread or distributed evenly between those four boards. If a 10 inch board shrinks that much, you see the gap along the edge of only the one board and it's very unsightly. Plus, dirt and debris get into those gaps and problems associated with that result.
In the house where we laid the cherry floor where we did the T&G joints with the tablesaw, the owners decided to install a woodstove after we had left the job. The resulting heat in the area around stove shrank the cherry to the extent that some of the tongues actually popped out of the grooves. We had to come in re-lay about half the floor, and then sand and finish it. That was one of those "character building" jobs...
Also, you're going to find it very difficult to mill an accurate edge along these boards. If you put them on a router table and the boards are bowed or twisted at all, that will raise them up off the table slightly. It might not sound like much to worry about, but after you're faced with mismatched edge joints that you need to grind down with a drum sander in order to make even, you'll understand why this is critical to get right.
My advice would be to take the cherry to a millwork shop. Get it cut into standard sized widths and let them do both the edge milling and backside relief cuts. Routers aren't really made for this type of work - reserve yours for fine woodworking. You'll end up with a better end result and longer service life from your router.
Zolton
some time ago i had the brilliant idea to use pallette lumber to make a floor....it was a whole lot of work...i milled all the lumber to 5/8" x 4" x randomlength, i used my shaper to cut the tongue and groove joints side and end, ran each piece back through the shaper with a stack of slot cutters to relive the back side to prevent cupping, laid the flooring with a flooring nailer through the tongue side and then sanded and finished the floor...looked great...lots of work...pallette lumber really hard on tooling...
if i ever wanted to do a cheap floor again i would just buy oak hardwood flooring seconds from a place like lumber liquidators...less than $1/sf...much less work...
also, in my opinion, unless you like the dented, scratched up look, domestic cherry is really too soft for flooring with anything less than the toughest factory applied finishes....
tuolumne, I agree with Zolton and cscwem, you are proposing a job which can be a huge problem. It may not seem that way, but generations of floor layers know much better. It may seem that you can easily rout whatever kind of edge you need. But you can't. The finished floor is a "test bed" to show up the slightest variation in the edge treatment. Go look at commercially-prepared hardwood flooring - either solid or "engineered." It has tongue and groove edges and is relieved on the back to form a "foot" down each edge. It has been prepared on huge milling/molding equipment of incredible accuracy and consistency. You would be much better off to take your lumber to a professional shop to have it ripped to appropriate widths and milled with T&G edges. Another solution would be to buy or rent a robust shaper (for the T&G) with a power feeder (you can't do this job without it - you simply can't hand feed the lumber and achieve the consistency of cut you will need) and a thicknessing planer/moulder (these can also accomplish the ripping). You will be extremely frustrated trying to do this with a router even with a table. You have probably never seen this kind of work done on site. It goes very smoothly with the right equipment. Good luck! Rich
Not meaning to discourage you from your endeavors but Zolton and cscwem are 100% correct. I worked for a commercial flooring company installing hardwood floors in retail stores across the U.S.
A couple of factors that come into the equation are the composition of the subfloor and adjoining materials. The size of the floor is also a consideration to keep in mind and the subfloor must be as perfectly flat as possible, especially between plywood sheets, with appropriate expansion allowance for same.
I would strongly recommend that you consult Fine Homebuilding before embarking on your project. Look for posts regarding wood flooring or do asearch. Consider the following:
Subfloor:
Concrete slab - 6 mil polyfollowed by 3/4" plywood on top with staggered seams, followed by 15# felt paper under the flooring material, which must be engineered flooring, not solid wood. Moisture from the slab will wick into the flooring if not sealed off thus the 6 mil poly. Also, given the above, what transitions are necessary to adjoining surfaces/spaces/rooms? Just for starters.
Wood: If a 3/4" subfloor is in place over joists, then 15# felt should suffice as long as the plywood is level between sheets and the seams are staggered. If not, then install 1/4" or 1/2" plywood over the 3/4" to level it out, staggering seams to the 3/4" underneath.
Both: Use an 8' or longer metal cutters edge or stringline to check for consistency between the top, and check both ways. Shim with floor leveling material where needed. I would also check on the diagonals of the space to be floored.
If it were up to me, in either of the above scenarios, I would use engineered flooring. The best are constructured of several thin layers of solid wood that are glued together perpendicular to each other and are factory tongue and grooved; you'll not achieve the tolerances required with home shop machines, much as you might try.
If you have any questions, I have experts that I can rally to the fore,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
Kidderville, NH
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
toulummne
I've done what you propose..
let me attempt to help you thru the land mine potential you are in for..
First it can be done and you might be very happy with the results..
whole bunch of land mines so in no particular order here are some..
Wood shrinks and swells.. wider boards shrink and swell a lot! Now to minimise the effect I put my black walnut flooring over Tamarack which has nearly the same swelling and shrinking as the black walnut,,.... but (here's a big one).. no where near the same when laid across the grain..
In short wood shrinks and swells sideways a ton and lengthwise not much! if you lay yours over plywood, the sub floor for all intents and purposes is fixed.. won't hardly move at all..
I tongue and grooved mine, you should do the same.. ship lapping won't keep the edge from curling back up whereas toungue and groove traps the board. Offset your tongue below the middle.. that will allow you to get more sandings before the tongue (or actually groove) becomes exposed.. you can't simply butt the boards together because as they shrink the subfloor will be exposed and look terrible!
Face nailing will look sorta poor.. I don't care how much care you take or how much experiance you have sooner or later you will miss and leave big old dings in the cherry! Simple cheap solutons include boring holes in it and setting screws, with a screw gun you'll be able to do it reasonably quickly.. I don't like the look od screws so I counter bored mine. Set the screw head about 1/2 below the surface, then I made plugs from my end scraps nd a plug cutter glued them all in and let the glue dry for a day..
Using a sharp chisel I pared them off nearly at the floor and sanded off the differance.. if you are careful to align the plugs and select plugs for grain & color matching it darn near becomes invisable. Or you could go the opposite direction and make plugs from say maple and really show off the contrasting color! Use the plugs as a design issue...
Some may poo poo this but frankly I'd use sheetrock screws in your case, they are sharp and drive in easily, hold well and as long as you predrill thru the cherry shouldn't snap off too easily..
You also need to make the shank holes larger than the screws by a lot.. remember the wood shrinks and swells, you need to accomidate that! The screw heads hold the wood down the large holes allow it to move side to side..
Another reason face nailing will look bad, is because as the wood shrinks and swells & it will want to crack the wood at the nailing point!
You will absolutely need to use a jointer.. sorry there is no other way! With a great deal of care you might get long fence on a table saw to work. It will have to be twice as long as your longest board and absolutely straight.. (I have some ideas you can use)
Don't worry about relieving the back, for centuries it wasn't done..
Cherry is soft, but should be OK. I've seen white pine used and other woods as soft as cherry. as long as you accept the patina that will result with a softer wood you should be pleased..
Nobody can tell you how many cutters you'll go thru, I'm still on my original unsharpened set after nearly 1000 bd.ft. of black walnut. But I use a shaper which is whole lot easier on cutting edges..
Grit, dust, and excatly what the wood is will affect how soon resharpening is called for..
Knots and figure dull them quicker than straight grain..
I'm back and thanks for the round of advice. It seems that for once there is more or less a general consensus on a subject...that I should not do this. I would not say that I'm stubborn, but I'm going forward myself becuase, well, I like to do everything myself!. If I took the wood to a shop for milling and ended up with skinny, perfect strips I would hate the floor every time I walked on it. I would also just get some prefinished Bruce hardwood from Home depot on sale for $2.75. No, I have to do things the hard way. Wide, random width boards that are 8 to 12 feet long instead of 3" wide boards averageing 30" long are must. The floor is supposed to look 200 years old. We are prepared for large edge gaps etc. The reality of the situation will magnify this...the room will be about 15'x24', planks running the short way over 15lb felt over 2x4 sleeps running the long way, over plywood and floor joists (over a cold garage). The sleepers happily accomodate radiant tubing and dry mason sand. The poster that mentioned screws tickled my interest. I acutally like the look of a skinny head black finish screw, and we may leave those exposed. Dings and cracks are OK, this is country cherry after all with lots of knots and worm holes etc. My original question regarding T&G was just that we would like to minimize differential edge movement (vertically). Will a 1/16th chamfer be enough if the boards are screwed at 16" o.c. instead of T&G, or could the cupping overwhelm that chamfer and the screws. I don't mind the way the floor would look, but nobody wants a sliver in their bare feet.
tuolumne,
Let me state that I didn't suggest that you not do it!
I did mine and I love the result!
Your champer should be just fine or you won't need to champer it at all (I didn't mine) be carefull which side is up because you want the grain to go down or level and that way you won't pick up slivers, champher or no.
A couple of other points..
A plug cutter is cheap. Mine cost $8.00 at Home Depot and the counterbore is simply a bigger drill bit.. I use brad points to ensure no tear out but those only cost a few bucks too.
It's extremely critical the time of year that you install the wide planks that you are speaking about! If installed during the winter and if you put the boards together tight,, as the wood swells it will cause cupping and other problems, if installed during the high humidity of summer and left slightly loose when the wood shrinks during the heating season, it might shrink enough that the tongue comes out of the groove..
The solution is to install them either slightly loose in the winter or extremely tight during the high humidity of the summer.. (or semi tight just before the peak of the summer)
I didn't actaully tongue and groove my boards.. I didn't want to waste that 1/2 inch of wide needed to make the tongue. Instead what I did was just groove everything and made splines to slide in place..
You'll want to shellac your floor!
Honest!
It's easy to do, cheap and extremely durable plus it's insanely easy to fix when goofs do happen. (they will, it's a floor after all and gravity seems to work everyplace.)<G> .
Give you an idea how easy? If you start at noon you'll have your guests over for dinner! Most likely they won't smell anything, if they do it will be a faint semi sweet smell, ,vary pleasant! BY morning even that's gone!
Oh and cost?
Hmm, you might budget $50.00 but you'll have money left over!
I already love shellac. I liked the sound of your installation technique noted in a separate post.
What did you use for splines? Could a plate joiner be used to accurately cut the groove? I don't have an appropriate router bit.
What is the ideal temperature and humidity to lay a floor. It will probably be sometime in March. I could leave a dehumidifier in the room for a few days and get the heat on to create the right environment.
tuolumne,
You'll want to make your splines out of that cherry, once the wood shrinks you'll want to see cherry not some other wood. I just used thin narrow boards and sliced them off with the table saw..That way my widest boards stayed wide and I didn't create a ton of sawdust cuting most of the board away to make the spline.
A groove cutter you should already have if you have a tongue and groove set!. Or you can buy just the groove cutter itself.. I'm cheap and had really great luck with Grizzly router bits, go to grizzly.com
I laid my flooring in the fall and on high humid days I jammed everything together as absolutely tight as I could make it! I mean jammed!
later as the heat came on I set things together a little looser. Tight but not jammed together tight.. In the dead of winter snug but a small gap would work best (and is also the easiest to do)..
On the living room, and great room I will use a differant technique to screw the floor in place. I'll drill holes from above install the planks and then go below where I have access and run the screws in from below.. carefull to make sure they won't go all the way thru just about 1/2 way!
That way it will look like there are no fasteners holding the wood in place.
I don't have a T&G set either! I wouln't have thought those splines would be strong enough to work with if sawn across the grain like you indicate...I'll do a little experimenting and see. What would the recommended fastener spacing be if I had locked edges. The sleepers are 16" o.c. but that seems like a lot. Would 48" work?
I've also taken a fancy to the plug idea. A contrasting wood like walnut might look really nice. Would an end grain plug (easily had and easier to make since I don't own a drill press) look OK since the wood contrasts anyway? If I was trying to match I would be worried about the end grain soaking up finish, but here it seems harmless.
Edited 1/22/2007 3:19 pm ET by tuolumne
tuolemne.
You will need one, not terribly expensive, $52.95 gets a set, whereas a slotting bit starts at $21.95
16" is actaully a stretch!
OK take a plug cutter. Install it in a drill. Press down on the face of the board..once it reaches flush you pull it out, repeat as many times as needed.. a drill press is easier but not required..It will take you about the same time it takes to drill a 3/8ths inch hole 1/2 inch deep (another words about 30 seconds per plug) with experiance you'll get faster, as the cutter dulls you'll get slower..
I made about 800 plugs an hour using a drill press and my bandsaw. I'm fat,old, and lazy so someone really could crank out a lot more if they wanted to.(rather than poping out the plugs I just bandsawed the board in half which released the plugs, tons faster!
once all the plugs (and a few spares are made) pop them out using a small straight slot screwdriver jammed in the groove cut and twisted slightly..
Don't try to get end grain
If you screw the wide boards down, not only will they shrink, but they're likely to split between fasteners as well. That's (one of) the beauties of the tongue and groove flooring system. The boards are only fastened to the subfloor along one edge. That leaves the other edge of the board free to move back and forth as the wood shrinks and expands with the humidity cycles and prevents board splitting - well, that and the fact that most strip flooring is considerably narrower than what you're talking about.
Zolton
Zolton.
That's why you don't simply screw them down! (splitting)
Rather you first drill a bigger hole in the finished flooring that will allow the wood to shrink and swell according to humidity. If you use a slightly softer wood like cherry the screw threads will actaully indent the wood allowing even more movement!
On my black walnut I drilled 1/4 inch holes to put # 6 screws in.
Or in the case where the screws are installed from below I drilled even larger holes (3/8ths) and used a washer under each screw.
Not too much discussion about the finishing process. I too was contemplating milling my own stock, but after researching the techniques professional companies such as Bruce/Lauzon... I cannot see how I could ever get a finish anywhere near what they do and pretty much have given up on that idea. I could see the finishing process being 1/2 the project and if done poorly it would either look terrible or turn out to be a maintenance nightmare. Suggestions/ideas/thoughts???
Hi Brad,
I used to work for a commercial flooring company who installed hardwood floors all over the country: SyracuseCommercialFloors.com. Here is a recepie that they used:
I would use BonaKemi Traffic per mfgr. recommendations
http://www2.bona.com/templates_bona/product.asp?id=2067
Basically, there is a seal coat (bona seal I believe) then 2 to 3 coats of Traffic on top. There are less expensive systems, but this is the best for water based systems. I would not use oil but if you are set on oil, then glitza is a name that comes to mind. But again, I would use water-borne. Technology today is outstanding! Oil has high VOC emissions, and is illegal to use in parts of the country
Floors take some skill to prep and finish though. This is a catalyzed product. If that won't work, use mega http://www2.bona.com/templates_bona/product.asp?id=2068
by bonakemi. Here's the link for the bonaseal http://www2.bona.com/templates_bona/product.asp?id=4523.
Hope this helps,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
Kidderville, NH
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I have no experience with products such as you describe, but will definetly take a look. Greatly appreciate your advice.
Brad
brad 805
I too had that fear but went ahead anyway..
Please read what I said about shellac.. It's insanely easy to do.. really fast (a typical living room could be done inside of 2 hours and if you start at noon the company coming to dinner won't smell hardly anything (if they stay over night it will be completely gone!)
The absolute worst painter in the world can do a great job! The only thing you'd need other than shellac and denatured alcohol is something to apply it with.. A broom, a mop, your stocking feet, rags, brushes, spray, wipe, smear, whatever!
(I'm only slightly exagerating)
Satin finish was invented because few modern finishes have the depth and beauty that shellac can have, polished without gloss, shine without looking plastic. A real elegant finish that simply cannot be immitated. (oh and shellac has been around for 5000 years)
Let me dispell some myths.
First it's so easy a caveman could do it.. OOPS! sorry cavemen!
Second it's among the hardest finishes there is, polyurethanes and many other finishes are much softer! My 150 St.Bernard/Newfoundland cross refuses to trim his own toenails and in spite of playing like a 5 year old boy on that floor he's yet to scratch it..
Third if he did somehow manage to scratch it all I'd have to do is train him to get the denatured alcohol out and put some on a rag and rub it back and forth for a few moments.. scratch-be-gone!
Safe? Every single pill you take is coated with it! So apprently the drug companies think it's pretty safe.. You mix it with denatured alcohol. 98% of denatured alcohol is the stuff you drink when the job is finished.. they put 2% stuff in it so highschool kids can't buy it and get a cheap drunk.. I suggest that you open the windows, if you don't like fumes of alcohol. Wear a mask to be extra safe, use a belt and suspenders too! close cover before striking, your mileage may vary, objects in mirror are closer than they appear,.....
yes water can cause it to whiten, if left on for a long period.. a little water spilt that's quickly wiped up will do no harm. Alcohol will leave a mark so if you plan on spilling some of that single malt scotch to test it, save the scotch for company..
Repairs are insanely easy.. you simply wipe with denatured alcohol and problem goes away.. if too much area is affected then wipe up the old shellac with denatured alcohol and a rag. It will come off easily if you remove it within 3 or 400 years, Beyond that I have no real experiance.. don't worry about blending. The new shellac will melt into the old shellac and make an invisable repair..
(I'm lying, I only stripped the shellac finish off my 70 year old piano.. it came off like I'd put it on last week.. but older quaility furniture is usually shellaced and they repair or strip it even when it's that old)
Finally cost, I doubt you'll spend more than $50.00 to do your living room, less for each bedroom..
Go to the I hate to finish if you'd like details about putting it on.. OR ask me..
I am really glad i asked about the finishing. The hardwoods I have been looking at cost anywhere between $8 to $13/sq ft (mirage/lauzon) (can $) and I have been contemplating spending the money on a few pieces of tools for the purpose plus the extra time. Who knows, maybe down the road I could use the equip for something else.
Great advice
brad,
The lauzon in East Hereford, QC?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
Kidderville, NH
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
yes, but I was pricing from a local re-seller. The two brands that stand out are mirage and lauzon, both in quebec as I understand.
brad,
I'm just over the boarder from them in NH. Howdy neighbor! I have a cottage on the Can. side of Lake Wallace, just past Frontier Lodge. Are you familiar with that area?Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
Kidderville, NH
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I am located in Northern BC. Been to Sherbrook years ago and Montreal, but thats about it for the east coast. Not familiar with that area.
500 bdft of quartersawn KD cherry - $160
New 13" planer and appurtances - $550
T&G router bit - $70
Finishes - $100
Nails - $20 (needed anyway)
Underlayment - $15 (needed anyway)
Total for a 360 sqare foot floor = $2.54/sq. ft installed
In the end, I've got a planer, satisfaction, a cheaper floor, some leftover cherry, and a whole boat load of experience that I didn't have before.
Where did you find quartersawn cherry for that cost? Seems to be $.32/bd ft??? I pay a lot more (canadian $ that is) for rough flatsawn stock from a wholesaler.
Brad805,
I paid 17 cents a bd.ft. for black walnut, 15 cents for 5/4 ash, 10 cents for fiddleback maple, got some boxelder for free, The boxelder looked wicked! had these red "lightening strikes" thru a creamy white board.
That was all surplus wood at my local sawmill. They send off surplus wood to the pallet mills and that's all they pay.. Surplus wood is wood that someone ordered but never picked up, it turns off color and maybe even gets grey. one pass thru the planner and all is beautiful.
you are quite the character. seem to darn happy, (kidding of course)! Thanks for all the info. I am stuck buying from a wholesaler, no local mills with any hardwood. Local trees are aspen, poplar, and spruce. Last order of flatsawn cherry cost $5.25/bd ft and the local retailer is far worse.
brad805,
Johnson logging in Cannon falls Minnesota sells FAS Cherry rough and green at the mill for $1.85 a bd.ft.
Give Dan a call and have some sent to you.. White oak is $ .80, black walnut is $1.50. etc. the prices fluctate a little from week to week depending on markets.. If you want a particular wood and he''s not sawing any of it you'll need to wait a while. could be a week, could be a few months.. They saw 2 million bd.ft a year so sooner or later they'll have it..
You pay for the frieght..
Ditto frenchy/brad805, mine treasure is someone elses canceled order!
brad805.
My nearly 1000 sq ft. of blackwalnut when finished probably cost me less than $500.00 and I'm being extremely generous. I'll bet it was actaully closer to $200.00
( I did get teriffic deal on the wood but even at todays prices it would have cost me only $1200.00 including everything except tools..) that's completely finished!
Tools on the other hand included a planner (you could buy a bench top model for well under $500.00) a jointer, a bench top jointer (for under $200.00) a decent router and bits etc. and have less than thousand dollars in everything..
I went whole hog, bought big stationary equipment 20 inch planner, 8 inch jointers, 3 hp shapers, etc. etc. etc..I'd guess I have nearly $10,000 in the tools it took to do the job.. but I've used those same tools for much, much, much, more than flooring.. when I'm finished I'll sell them and recover much of what I spent..
I was doing the math last night and figured out the same. Did you use a drum sander? I already have most of the other stand alone pieces of equipment you mentioned. I don't really like the mess of sanding in place. A drum sander is really not that bad as far as cost in the grand scheme of things. How long would you estimate it took to prep the wood and then finish it?
Thanks
brad805,
Oh you will sand the floor, don't even think you can avoid it! However, Don't use a drum sander!
too hard to control, too slow, and too easy to make mistakes..
There are new DA sanders for floors.. big square pads say 16"x24" that do such a wonderful and slick job your grandmother could do it (I don't dare say a caveman could do it) if you did a decent job of installing the floor reasonably level and smooth you will take maybe at worst 3 hours per 500 sq.ft. (I took 8 hours because I'd made a mistake and didn't catch it untill a big chunk of the floor was in place already..)
figure maybe 10 minutes to put the first coat on 500 sq.ft, wait 15 minutes, sand with a small palm sander. (took maybe 15 minutes per 500 sq.ft.)This is real lick and a promise sanding..all you are doing is knocking off the nubs and fuzz.. second coat took maybe 6 minutes to do, waited an hour, then 10 minutes of sanding with a palm sander. followed by the last coat which took another 6 minutes to do..
I did it all in my stocking feet and my soxs were really crusty when finished.. a couple of washes and I can't tell which pair I wore.. (shellac washes out in the wash)
I did it with a big pad on a stick but a roller, a brush, heck anything works just fine.. Remember to buy Zinzzler clear and mix three gallons of denatured alcohol with it.. don't use thinner or anything else. DEnatured alcohol. Got that? sorry, but it's important. 3 gallons of denatured alcohol to one gallon of clear Zinzzlers!
It's really watery and that's a great thing, no runs, no brush marks, no hassles etc..
Brush or wipe or whatever really fast! don't be careful!! speed is real important!
If you miss something don't worry! the next coat will melt the first coat and everything will blend right in..
The absolute worst thing to do is be careful.. then you are likely to get a dry edge and that's when problems happen..
Get your kids to do it if you tend to be slow and careful.. Speed is really important! just slop away!
If the fumes bother you open windows or wear a mask (or both) ..they will be gone in few hours leaving a faint sweet smell that too will be gone by morning.
I don't have the faintest idea of the time involved in preping the wood. I assume you mean from roughsawn to finish flooring.. I did it as I I had time from whatever else I was doing..
With wide boards (over 4 1/2 inches for cherry) I would not reccomend doing a tounge and groove floor.
Let me first reccomend a book. It can be purchased for $15 from amazon.
Considering the value of your cherry boards, I would say this purchase is a no brainer.
"Hardwood Floors: Laying, Sanding and Finishing" by Don Bollinger
There is also a nice video that goes along with the book, if you want to see real demonstrations. I found a copy at my public library.
As for your floor,
I would suggest putting a very slight camfer on all four face edges and scewing the floor down to the subfloor, leaving a small gap between all the rows. I would pre drill all the holes with a countersink bit, and then cut tapered plugs to fill the holes. Plugs done in a contrasting wood look really nice. The edge sander can be used later to sand all the plugs flush to the floor, VERY quickly.
If you want to do a tounge and groove, have your boards ripped in half, selecting 2-3 set widths if you want a variable width floor, and then take them to a shop that can mill them for you. I have found places that will run tounge and groove for $.40 per foot. The machine also joints and planes the boards to exact thickness all in one pass.
For 550 feet, you are looking a $220 - $300... I bet you would spend that much on router bits if you tried this at home.
Good luck in whatever you choose...
vincent
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