I have a small area (approx 190 Square feet) to cover and was thinking about going for a rustic look with some 8" wide Pine planks from the local store. These planks are 1" thick. These are not T&G so I was planning on butting them together and face nailing with cut nails.
I have a Biscuit Joiner that I can use between the joints.
I realize that pine is soft and I will have some separation between planks.
Should I use the Biscuit joiner to strengthen the joints? Is it necessary to leave an expansion gap between planks? Has anyone tried this?
Do NOT use the biscuits. If/when the boards shrink, the biscuits will show... or if they are glued well enough, you'll crack the boards themselves as they shrink. The only way I would use biscuits is if you can do it as a "floating" floor where you glue up the whole thing as one big sheet, then just lay it in place. Or, you could use some pony clamps with long bars and build it in place as a large floating floor.
I've laid a few pine floors. The trick is to do it with dry wood. That means doing the job when humidity is low in your area. Butt them up tight using wedges, a jack, or a lever system. If you are doing it in the Winter, you can just bring them together. In the summer with high humidity, push them very, very, hard. The gaps will also depend on how wide the boards you use are: the wider they are, the bigger your gaps (it's a percentage deal :-)
As an example, I did three rooms with wood from the same mill. When installed, you could not get a piece of paper in a gap in any of these floors. The first I did in May after a dry spring. Low humidity. That floor is tight year round, with gaps of maybe 1/16" in Winter in a few spots. Another floor was done in June. I was a little better with the clamping system and I push them together really tight. But, it was June and the humidity started to climb a little. That floor is not too bad but has 1/8" gaps in some spots in the Winter. The last floor I could not get to until July. We had three weeks of hot, humid weather. I was really, really good with the clamping system in this area as I had masonry to push the jack against. That floor has multiple 3/16" gaps in the Winter.
I go with T+G. If the stock you have isn't already milled, I use splines. Use a router or shaper and mill a groove on all 4 sides of the board. I make my splines out of no-void plywood. They should be a tight fit, and you should fill all of the grooves. As the boards move (and warp), the splines help keep the edges from rising, and keep the floor smooth. Because there are no togues to toenail, I simply surface nail the boards. In the event your floor *does* shrink, the splines keep the openings from going all theway through to the subfloor (or if tehre is no subfloor into whaever is below the pine...)
The house is pretty dry. I have a dehumidifier running all the time. The problem is, the room that I was planning on installing these planks in is an enclosed 3 season sun room. Temperature/humidity swings are pretty normal. Should I acclimate the wood in this room or in a drier, humidity controlled room and then bring it into the possibly more humid room when I'm ready to install?
Traditional pine plank floors are just pine board face-nailed down crosswise to the (also plank) subfloor. No biscuts, splines, or T&G. They got painted. (shock, horror). Usually ugly colors. You can expect fairly wide cracks. Was it me, I'd store the wood in the most humid place I could find short of the bathtub, and then nail them in place with no spacing. As they dry out, they'll shrink. You can minimize crack-size and cupping by using narrower planks.
I'll disagree, as I posted earlier. Unless the wood has been stored in a very dry place for a long time, it still has some shrinking to do. If you install in any season except Winter, make it tight - it will only get looser. You can always run a circular saw between the boards if you see that they've gotten too tight. THere's no un-circular saw.
I've seen many pine floors - also poplar as well as many different types of hardwood. Last summer, I ripped up (saved and currently stored) am origianl t&g pine floor in my house (c. 1925) which was not uncommon in my area in this era (and also knotty pine walls). It had been stained and shellaced (same stuff as the walls). One pass through the planer and it'll look like new. They did however use an excessive amount of cleats! There is nothing wrong with pine flooring. Anyone saying otherwise is more than welcome to come check out my aged stack. Oh, it was replaced with subflooring (which previously didn't exist!) and t&g bamboo. Mark from Pasadena, MD
The OP noted that he was aware how soft the floor was.
Actually, in the early days, they painted them because it was fashionable. Paint was expensive. Painting a floor was showing off.
You can buy Southern Yellow fairly easily if you want harder pine. Although, my one aged SWP floor does not look much different than my Eastern White Pine floor in terms of wear. The SWP just does not have the character though and other knotty hard pine is difficult to find in the East.
Or, in my case, to supply additional strength due to an inferior subfloor. Assuming that he's talking wide pine, you nail at the edges and center, perhaps one more in 12" or greater boards. Or, you use screws and plugs.
I think you'd find flooring quite a bit different here on the East Coast. There are lots of old houses - or repros - with lots of face nailed pine floors.
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