Hi,
I posted a few months ago about our very squeaky floor. We had the floor &
subfloor replaced in the main hallway and the foyer hallway (perpendicular
to the main hall). The original subfloor was 1/2" thick and was replaced
with 3/4" plywood and with new 3/4 tongue and groove oak put on top. One
interesting discovery by our floor guy was that the nails holding the
original tongue and groove oak were spaced about 1.5 feet apart (more or
less). Between the scant nailing and the too thin subfloor no wonder the
floor was so squeaky. The new floor is quite solid with no squeaks
what-so-ever which actually makes us more aware of how squeaky and soft the
rest of the floor is.

At this point we have five rooms with the original oak floor and sub-floor
(three bedrooms, living-room, dining room). We kept the oak boards from the
hallways and even though the floor guy wasn't being careful, most of them
are in good shape (I've been knocking off the nails with an angle grinder).
I compared cut-offs of both the new and old oak flooring. I know the new
hallway flooring is red oak and I'm pretty sure the original flooring is
white oak.

So now we're thinking about fixing the other floors, one room at a time.
Our thought is to carefully pull up the original oak floor, replace the 1/2"
subfloor with 3/4" ply and re-install the original white oak. We could use
the boards that were removed from the hallways to replace any broken boards
and to replace some badly stained boards. We suspect that even if we're
careful, we might not have enough of the original oak and will need to
incorporate some new tongue & groove oak. After it's all installed, then we
plan to sand and refinish. To keep costs down, we are trying to figure what
we can do ourselves (Pull up the old floor? We know we can do the sanding &
refinishing) and what we will have our floor guy do (installing for sure).

Question:
1) Is pulling up an old hardwood floor for re-use a DIY job? Are there
special tools for easing the boards/nails up or would your basic crow-bar do
the job? How does one start - at a wall or in the middle?

2) If we need to incorporate some new oak with the old, does it need to be
the same type of oak? I mean - if we had a board of red oak in the middle
of a white oak floor, will it be obvious after we've refinshed the whole
she-bang? I've compared the new red oak boards and the old white oak boards
and they do look different (the new red oak has more contrast between the
dark and light stripes (I don't think stripes is the right word but I think
you'll know what I mean), the white oak stripes are finer, the boards are
darker with not so much contrast. However I also wonder if the finish, stain
and age can also make the boards look so much different.

3) Any other comments or advice about this job?

Chris