My neighbor had just finished flooring his house and was kind enough to offer his extra planks to me for the van project! I love wood floors and the dark oak definitely classes up the van.
In order to install the floors, first I laid down and trimmed to fit a foam “underlayment.” The underlayment softens the feel of the wood floor slightly and also allows for a better fit between the floor and the subfloor.
After fitting the underlayment, I started laying down floor planks, just as one wood in a house. For each plank, the tongue was glued, along with the receiving groove. The plank was hand fitted and then tapped into place with a rubber mallet. A couple planks required some complex trimming in order to fit around the wheel wells, and my dad lent his expertise in helping get those right.
Finally, I used a pneumatic brad nailer to secure the edges to the subfloor so that it wouldn’t shift due to vibration while driving. Often times floors like this are installed “floating” in houses, with baseboards hiding the gap between the floor and the wall. This is so that the wood floor can expand and contract freely according to temperature and humidity. However, since my floor is so much smaller that a normal house floor, I felt that brad nailing down the floors wouldn’t cause buckling when traveling through hotter & wetter climates.
OSHA who?