How to Put Hardwood Floor on Cement

Put on your rubber gloves. Put a half cup of TSP in a gallon of warm water. With a scrub brush, scrub the cement surface completely clean. Rinse well with your sponge and clean water. Let it dry for at least 48 hours.

Set 3/8-inch wall spacers every few feet around the perimeter of the room at the base of the walls.

Use your notched trowel to spread floor adhesive over a strip of the floor along the far wall from the doorway, coming out two feet from the wall and spanning the room completely.

Set your first floorboards into place along the wall, in the glue, with the grooved side of the tongue-and-groove milling facing the wall. The spacers should keep the boards 3/8 inches out from the wall, providing room for the wood to expand. (The space will be covered by the floor trim later.) Clip the boards together end to end. Cut the final piece at the end to size on your miter saw.

Lay your next course of flooring by pressing the tongue-and-groove edges of the boards together. Use a scrap of flooring as a tapping block, setting it against the outer edge of edge new board and using a hammer to tap the scrap piece so it tightens the boards together. Cut the end pieces as needed on your miter saw.

Do as much of the floor as you can, until you no longer have enough room left to work. Let the floor set overnight.

Install the final few courses once the previous portion of flooring is solid enough to stand on. Let all of it cure for another day before installing floor trim.