Toller wrote:
"George" wrote in message
Toller wrote:


Yes, face-nailed oak floors. That is odd? I guess haven't looked at
floors much; how is it normally done?

Blind nailed if tongue and groove material or screwed and plugged if
square edged material. Face nailing is pretty unusual.

Its square edged and face nailed.
The house is about 25 years old, and while it is not much by today's
standards, when it was built it was considered to be a premium house. Guess
they cut a few corners.

There's nothing that can be done to make those nails bite if they're
not biting now. Face nailing puts the fastener perpendicular to the
direction of wood movement. Wood floors move - a lot - and the
installation has to be designed to accommodate that movement. Your
installation can't. As the wood expands and contracts with the
changes of season and humidity, the nails essentially sway back and
forth and enlarge the holes in the subfloor, decreasing the holding
power of the nails. The seasonal changes also cause the wood flooring
to expand and contract vertically, so the nail pops the same way a
drywall nail would.

I really am at a loss as to what could be done to fix it short of
pulling all of the nails and using counterbored screws and plugs.
http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/f...ugs/sanded.htm

That's a hell of a lot of work and unless there's not a lot of
flooring with the problem or it's really expensive flooring it's
probably not worth the time to try and salvage the bad installation.
Looking on the bright side, you could reclaim the yanked planks for
other woodworking projects.

R