Hardwood flooring layout & tying in

[Robert Opalko]

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!

[Dave Richards]

I'm certainly no expert but it would see reasonable to start at the door and work into and across the room. you might need to rip one of the pieces in the doorway opening so you can make the first long piece(s) in the room whole pieces. Easier to rip 3 feet or less anyway. As to a transition pieces. with no more height change than that, I wonder if you could put two or three pieces together for the door opening and plane them to make the transition without having it be too obvious.

[Kevin Guarnotta]

I'd suggest a transition piece. Even though you want to run the flooring the same direction, it is highly likely that there will be a discrepancy somewhere, that is easily hidden in a transition piece. This piece does not need to cover over the flooring, it could just be a piece of wider stock, or narrower stock, an accent piece....

[Jim Andrew]

Is there a tongue on the edge where you can start? Or did you cut it off? If there is a tongue, don't see why you can't just start from there. You may have to rip a little off the first row, or make a filler to fill in along the wall. One thing to remember about flooring, if you have to run a piece down the middle of a room, and go both ways, you can always rip a spline from a piece of similar lumber, and that will allow you to lay both directions from the first piece. Be sure to nail through it so it is solid first.

[Ken Platt]

I think a transition just looks nice, sets off the room from the hallway, so I'd use one even if the height and squareness wasn't an issue.

Regarding which wall to start with, when I put in several rooms of flooring a few years back, I read that one should always start with the most viewed wall, and make that the best looking. In your case, probably the far wall would be seen most as folks enter the room, so I'd start there.

BTW, I found the book "Hardwood Floors" by Bollinger to be very useful when I was putting those floors in my house.

Ken

[David Nelson1]

Morning Robert,

I'm piece mealing flooring in my home as well. In your case, I guess it would depend on where the flooring stops in relationship to the door. If it right up against it and your working with 5 inch planks I would start @ the door and make the first piece fit the door by notching it @ the entrance. Rip to match to finish that run, then see where you are with the remainder of the room. It might make sense to start on the far wall as suggested or it might make sense to start in the middle and fill in both directions.

[Jeff Duncan]

I guess I'll just think about how I would do it if it were my house. I would start the flooring at the hallway where the flooring already exists and make a seamless transition so it looks like it was all done at the same time. It's hard to say exactly without seeing your particular situation, but very generally speaking if you have some basic equipment it shouldn't be that difficult.

I would first deal with the height difference, 3/32" isn't too bad and assuming the new flooring is higher than the old can be transitioned nicely if you have a planer. Run your first piece through the planer bottom up and make several small bites to get it flush to the existing. Then when your ready for the next piece take one less pass than you did for the first, repeat 1 or 2 more boards until you have full thickness pieces again. Now that those boards are ready you have to figure out if the boards will run parallel to the room. I would think since the two are directly adjacent they should be pretty close right off the bat. If you have to adjust a little I would just shave the groove side of the board(s) a little to bring them parallel with the room. If they are off more than a bit you can spread the difference out over two boards instead of making it up all on one. You may also have to shave a bit of tongue off the next board so it still engages full depth with the board you shaved.

It may sound trickier than it really is, but it's not that difficult at all. When I did my house I had to transition between multiple rooms and doorways to tie in the new floors to the old. I also had to transition from a kitchen that I completely gutted and leveled the joists to a dining room that dropped 2" over 11' in width! I don't have a single threshold in the house, (don't like them), and the only place you can see there's any difference between the old and new flooring is one room that has dark stained floors. A little time and thinking it through and you can make the whole thing work seamlessly.

good luck,
JeffD

[Robert Opalko]

Thanks all - good information!