Blind-Nailing Procedure

• After laying one course of flooring and either gluing or top-nailing it to the subfloor, hardwood floor installers usually use a nail gun or a special tool called a floor nailer to install the bulk of a floor. They tap boards together with the tongue side facing out and, if using a nail gun, shoot a nail at a 45-degree angle through the tongue into the subfloor. If they are using a flooring nailer, they set it on the edge of the board and strike it with a heavy rubber mallet. It automatically drives a barbed cleat into the tongue at the correct angle.
  
  

Floor Stability and Appearance

• The force of the nail gun or flooring nailer drives a nail deep into the subfloor while simultaneously forcing the board being nailed tight up against the one next to it. The angle of the nail keeps the board down and also prevents even a warped board from separating from the one next to it. The result is a gap-free floor with no visible nails. Gluing will also produce a floor free of nail holes, but there is no foolproof way to prevent warped boards from separating while the glue is drying.
  
  

Ease of Installation

• Whereas gluing boards to a subfloor involves the spreading of messy glue and the logistics of moving around on a subfloor coated with sticky material, blind-nailing is a clean, systematic operation. A trained flooring installer can lay the floor in an entire room in a single day with either a nail gun or a flooring nailer with minimal effort. If using a flooring nailer, the installer needs physical strength to swing the mallet, but once having established the correct amount of force to use, should be able to sink each cleat with a single stroke.
  
  

Removing the Flooring

• If it becomes necessary to remove the flooring, the procedure is much simpler if it has been nailed down. Removing glued-down flooring requires multiple cuts with an accurately adjusted blade and then, depending on the strength of the adhesive, a difficult prying operation resulting in little salvageable material. If the floor has been nailed, the boards can be systematically pried up one by one, and many of them will be in suitable condition for reuse. After you remove a glued-down floor, you still have to scrape the residue from the subfloor, but after you've removed a floor that has been nailed, the subfloor will be in a condition to accept new flooring with little extra effort.