Hello all -I hope this is the correct forum to ask this in. I have a 3/4” x 5 1/2” T&G pre-finished oak floor (solid) in our hallway. As usual, the flooring in the hall runs parallel to the length of the hallway (longways). We put this floor in a year or so ago. Now we are ready to move on to the first room off of the hallway to the right – a craft room for my wife.
I want the flooring to run in the same direction as in the hallway, in fact the wall that divides the hallway and the craft room happens to be the longest unbroken wall in the room, so it seems natural.
My question is, where do I start laying the floor in the room? Do I start from the doorway and down the length of the long wall, or do I start along that long wall on the end farthest from the door and work the way back to the door?.. Intuitively, it seems anyway, no matter where I start it will be impossible to have a perfectly straight line that runs parallel to the hallway/door piece that also makes for a square room..or vice versa.
The other question is – should there be a transition piece between the hallway floor and the craft room even though they are going to run the same direction? There may be ever so slight a height difference from a test piece I layed just from one side of the door to the other – perhaps 3/32” or so.
Cheers and thanks for any help!
Replies
dukes
Don't assume anything.
I would first measure out from this old floor edge-EXACTLY- at both ends of the door opening. Take and strike a line through both those marks and continue them across the whole room. Now measure to that wall opposite at each end of the line-is it the same? Is it close? Is it so far off that you can't stand it?
I would continue on from the door opening and existing flooring. You don't have to just lock onto an uncut edge of the floor (Tongue), but you could. You could go just into the room and start (using your reference line you struck, above)-working to the far wall. Then work back to the joint in the doorway using a spline and change direction.
At just 3/32 (there's no any of those lines on my tape) you could then just bevel the top edge a bit (eased), re cut a groove (provided you have a tongue finishing the existing floor).
Did I confuse you yet?
Threshold?
I beleive some people put a theashold piece the exact width of the door jam in the door way to transition between rooms. Quite often this is done when going from wood to tile or such. I would think this could be done nicely in your application and this piece could be used to make up any differences in floor height between rooms.
Ditto Big Cal...
Yeah, what Big Cal wrote.
I'd layout the craft room flooring starting at the doorway wall. Make sure the room is square, or close to it. Adjust the flooring in the room itself to fit the room itself. Fitting the room is the number one priority.
With that layout in mind, if you can use additional strip hardwood to easily make the transition at the door from the hallway flooring to the craft rooom flooring, bravo. If you have to rip one or more of the strips...even with a slight taper...I'd do that. If you have a table saw you can easily rip a strip down, then re-establish a tongue or groove to that ripped strip as needed.
Personaly I prefer the look of continuous wood throughout a house, and my answer it biased towards that.
Your 3/32" height differential? I'd pad out under the thinner doorway transition pieces with a bed of PL urethane adhesive. The 3/32nds height differential will disappear across the 4" width of the door threshold. I'll over-exagerate and say this will leave you with a slight down slope from the hallway height to the craft room height. It's not rocket science. But the PL will just fill in under the strips that float, filling in the 3/32nds gap to prevent any vertical movement (and squeaking) of those pieces.
Yo Mongo
That's 6/64ths. Less than a 10th of an inch. Now we're talking, decimals!
dukes
first-your reply to me is shown as a reply to your original post-is this true? Did you push the REPLY to ORIGINAL button or the blue-REPLY TO THIS?
thanks,
You are trying to see for sure whether your old existing layout WILL work in the new room.
If you have a tongue showing in your doorway (or can remove one pc and have one) then you can proceed into the other room with the same layout. If you have a groove-you can install a spline-in that groove and capture your new pc's groove and continue into the room.
Margins at the wall disappear-so as you go into the room, even if it's just an inch at the immediate wall, what does it matter?
The Line you are striking in the room will help you figure your plan of attack-if it's off from the opposite wall? how much. That doorway is one place you can correct a problem. A tapered pc of just a 1/4" diff. end to end will alter that Line in the room by a boatload.
Understood - thanks