The Flooring Handbook: The Complete Guide to Choosing and Installing Floors

This book provides a very good overview of the different types of flooring. It also provides some useful tricks. I recently installed 17'x17' hardwood bamboo floor for a friend whose house is on a slab. We had to install a vapor barrier and if you read this book you'll notice that the author and the references are generally from the UK. So if you walk into a flooring distributor and ask for some of the products Jeffries mentioned, you will get some weird looks. But the trick about using tape to hold the boards while the glue dried was invaluable.

We're refinishing our hardwood flooring and adding laminate to the playroom downstairs, but I wanted to do some research before spending any money. I checked out several books on flooring from the library, and this was the only one that was so thorough I immediately went out and purchased my own copy. Not only does it cover hardwoods and laminates, it covers just about every flooring material you can imagine (leather, rubber, cork, bamboo, etc.). Every material gets a solid description, several pictures, a list of pros and cons, and installation instructions. Also, a big chart in the front tells you which floors can be installed yourself and which need professional installers. It also gives number ratings for the difficulty of the task (should you take it on yourself) and for how much you can expect to spend in comparison with other flooring materials. This book is simply the definitive resource on the subject.

This is an excellent book, by far the best I have ever bought on flooring maintenance and installation (I wish I had bought this one first). This book offers great comparisons of different types of materials, well written and simple instructions on how to install them and advice on when to get a professional if your an amatuer such as myself. This book is a great resource and will help you make an informed decision if your putting in a new floor, whether you do it yourself or not.