How to Install Maple Flooring
- 1). Cover the subfloor in flooring paper, rolling it out in rows and stapling it down with a regular staple gun.
- 2). Lay the first course of maple floorboards along the wall where you want to start. Set the board with the grooved side of the tongue and groove milling facing the wall and sitting 1/2 inch out from it (to allow the maple to expand).
- 3). Nail down the boards with a nail gun, shooting nails every 10 or 12 inches along both edges of each board. Lock the boards together at the ends as you lay them. Cut the last board to fit at the end, using a miter saw.
- 4). Nail down the next few courses with their sides locked tightly against the previous course. Nail them with the nail gun. Continue until you've laid enough courses so there's room for the pneumatic flooring stapler to sit on the flooring, usually three or four courses.
- 5). Connect your pneumatic flooring stapler to its pressure tank and turn it on. Stand the flooring stapler on the installed boards, and hook the front of the stapler down around the front edge of the next board to be installed.
- 6). Strike the firing pad of the flooring stapler with the rubber mallet, knocking the boards tightly together and driving a flooring staple through the side of the board and downward. Put a staple every 10 or 12 inches along the length of the board, and the next boards in the course.
- 7). Install more maple boards with the stapler, crossing the whole room. Stagger the ends of the boards from course to course, using different-size boards to make sure they don't line up.
- 8). Secure the last three or four courses of maple flooring with your nail gun, when you are too close to the ending wall to use the flooring stapler. Cut the boards in the final course lengthwise on a table saw so they will fit along the ending wall while leaving a 1/2-inch gap there. Floor trim will cover the gap.
Source...