How to Install Morning Star Bamboo Flooring
Bamboo flooring looks dramatically different than regular hardwood flooring, with richer colors and more delicate and distinct grain patterns, but it installs in exactly the same manner. Like hardwood, bamboo expands and contracts with climate changes, so it's important to let it sit in the room for a week or two before installation to acclimate to the environment. Morning Star is a line of bamboo flooring that's prefinished, so once you lay it, you're done.
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Cover the floor in paper underlayment, rolling it out in courses. Overlap the sides by an inch or two. Secure it with a staple gun.
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Set the first course of Morning Star bamboo floorboards alongside one edge of the floor, locking them together at the ends and putting the grooves of the planks facing the wall. Put plastic shims between the planks and the wall to make a ¼-inch space there (this allows for natural movement of the flooring).
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Nail down the planks with your air-driven floor nailer. Put nails every foot or so along both edges of each board. Use a miter saw to cut the final plank as needed.
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Lay your subsequent course of bamboo planks by fitting them to the sides of the previous course. Knock the tongue-and-groove edging tightly together by setting a piece of scrap flooring against the outside of the board and tapping at it with a hammer.
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Secure the courses (after the first one) with nails shot through the sides of the boards, rather than the top, putting one nail per foot at a downward angle all along the top of the tongue.
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Continue across the entire floor, course by course. Stagger the ends of the boards between courses. Cut the final course on a table saw, lengthwise, to leave the ¼-inch gap at the wall. Floor trim will cover the gaps.
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