OT: Laying out engineered wood floor

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On both home projects and electronics ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Jim Thompson
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I can see the issue with expensive flooring materials that are hard to shape, or come in long unmanageable rolls, but with wood or composite flooring, I think you're nuts to align anything.

I'd go with ~ 45 degree bias on everything. All cuts are fairly short and under wainscotting. Goes from room to hall without issues.

And it looks like it was designed by somebody with a human brain, which is something usually missing from 'engineered' anything nowadays.

RL

Reply to
legg

At the old house in North Scottsdale I had the problem of tiling a long hallway plus kitchen plus entry hall, all adjoining.

I drew up an accurate floor plan, including the taper in the hall way (it was 4'0" at the north end, 3'11" at the south end, 30' long :-)

Then slid around an overlay of the tile pattern until I minimized cuts, yet avoided "sliver" pieces.

Then I marked the floor with a white paint pen... chalk lines have a way of disappearing ;-)

I solved the visible taper issue with the hallway by tweaking grout joint width from one end to the other. Looked good to the eye. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Jim Thompson
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Absolutely! I'm not only worried about 'slivers', but reaching the back walls of each room with a course that is visibly not parallel. So its not just an exercise in starting at the right point, I've got to average the misalignment of multiple back walls and project that line through some doorways into the hall.

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Paul Hovnanian  paul@hovnanian.com
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Paul Hovnanian P.E.
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I'll keep that in mind the next time I want to rant about Obamacare. :-/

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Paul Hovnanian  paul@hovnanian.com
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Paul Hovnanian P.E.
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Some are pros, some are not. But the courses are generally targeted at people who need instruction in order not to saw their fingers off.

But you get lots of advice. Common sense lets one filter out the useful tidbits. Most of the good tips I've gotten are obvious once I read them.

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Paul Hovnanian  paul@hovnanian.com
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Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Draw some accurate floor plans. I like paint pens to mark everything.

If you have significant anti-parallelism of walls, you're going to have to make fudging cuts so that the eye is pleased. As someone else pointed out, maybe you're better off with a 45° alignment to walls... avoiding visual parallelism problems altogether.

I added a wall to my original house, separating the family room from the entry hall (wife was nursing baby, and didn't want someone coming to the front door and seeing her).

I pre-framed it and tacked it in place... absolutely vertical. Walked down the hall to the bathroom. Coming back up the hall... gawd!... conflicting verticals... I tapped it out of vertical to match the hallway tilt, so it looked just fine, but it was off vertical a good

1" at 8' up :-( ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Even expensive tiling, laid square-on, will often be designed to take the eyes off the square, with biased or interlocking patterns. It pays the eye, when everything is boxey enough already.

Everyone eventually accumulates at least one flooring project in their lives. I can remember sanding off tile adhesive ( it...gets...... everywhere...) only to discover that it was water-soluble (trying to damp-wipe the resulting dust on everything....). At least I was able to advise others, later, before they'd made too heavy inroads into a similar effort, with chisels or whatever.

You'll find much sub-flooring laid on a bias - an attempt to enforce evenness in upper 'squared' layers and to reduce squeeking by distributing the weight of traffic across multiple tie-points.

You can reduce waste by starting in the center with the engineered wood too, when laid on the bias. You place-where-fit - first on one side, then the other, when start and finish cuts don't hit parallel walls. Check subflooring so that you're crossing it, and not repeating the same bias.

RL

Reply to
legg

When sub-flooring was made of 1x wood it was laid on a bias. I've never seen sheet goods laid on a bias. With properly laid sheets (supported seams) or T&G there isn't any point.

You're assuming very square rooms.

Reply to
krw

That sounds interesting, I just wonder how one picks off the beam.

I've tiled a number of houses and set up is always a bitch if done right. Most of the time I did 3 dimensional swimming pools. I would dedicated the first day to preparation and set up (with pools this can be a week long process) and lots of customer would complain, 'When are you gonna get to the tile?' with a snotty attitude.

This is always tough without seeing the job site and the amount of analness required and I've never done snap together wood floors. I can't count the number of times I've told customers that I will not do bids over the phone, must see the job.

First you walk in the front door, out the back door, or find the main focal point of the area and chose the longest wall where there will be uncut material. Then lay out the material (depending on the length) and see if you can get full pieces to fit between the walls. If not maybe a shift to one side and cut a small amount from each side will work. This type of set up is essential for what you describe for this job. Some times one can shift the angle to the median line of walls that aren't parallel. This may not be so important with wood grain and tight fitting joints cause the eye will not pick up that joints are not lined up with the wall cause of the waviness of the grain. But, you don't want a sliver on any wall.

Just start off like you know what your doing and shoot off the main wall (measure the same distance twice and chalk line) , then shoot off the median of the hall and room(s). Then 3 4 5 rule as big as possible and caulk those lines and then check where they intersect with the other lines and this is where the bad news sets in. :o) It is amazing how screwed up others can do their jobs. This is where you have to visualize the problems in the minds eye and shift and compensate so that you know ahead of time where the worst will show up.

If you take your time and be as accurate as you can possibly be it will work out. Double check or hammer home the importance of accuracy of chalk lines to the marks to the helper if you have one. This one of the reasons I worked solo, cause I just wasn't putting up with screw ups. If your going all the way around an island, triple check before you start. Island like from the kitchen down a hall way into a living room and back into the kitchen.

Hope that helps. Oh, pass up or go beyond the marks where ya hold the chalk line and make the line match the mark. Not like most do and put the line down with their finger on the mark.

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

ask a good tiler to set you up some chalk lines. when i tiled my house, i had a large room with a central kitchen. i wanted to tile the whole thing, meaning that the grout lines had to line up in the correct place when i tiled around the interior walls for the kitchen with the tile coming around the opposite side of the walls.

using long chalk lines, establish a baseline, then establish an exact 90 degree angle off that (3,4,5 triangle). use those to construct perpendicular lines from the 2 baselines to work your way out and down the hall and around corners, simply by accurate measurements and making the lines be parallel or

90 degrees to the previous ones. you don't need to have as many chalk lines as tiling (i used a chalk line every 2 tiles which gave me 3' squares), just ones in the necessary places where you can check that things are coming out straight.

regards, charlie

Reply to
chaniarts

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