Getting ready to do my first row of flooring.

The straightest line I have seems to where the sub floor panels meet. This is straighter than the outside and inside walls.

The sub floor line is 3 1/2" away from the inner wall and I am using 3 1/2" plank. It is a bad thing to use the sub floor grove and the starting line? Also note the inner wall is undercut so there is some wiggle room.

I am going to laying the entire 1st floor and the starting point would be the middle of the house. If I use the screw a 2 x 4 to the subfloor method for the laying the 1st row, does it matter if the row next to the inner wall is only face nailed? I would only reverse the spline when the door ways encountered leading to the other half of the house.

thanks

erik

Not the best idea. It is better to snap a chalk line. Place a mark at each end of the starting wall out the width of the flooring + 1/2" + the width of the tongue. For 3&1/4" wide flooring, your marks at each end would then be 4". If you don't have a helper handy to hold one end of the line, then drive a finish nail just part way into the subflooring. Hook your chalk line over the nail and run the line out to the other end's mark. Snap the line and now you have a straight line to line the flooring up to. Line up the front part of the tongue to the line and your row will be straight. It doesn't matter if the wall isn't straight ( they rarely are ). What matters is the flooring being straight.

Thanks for the reply. Still confused, is the bad idea not using a chalk line or having the chalk line mirror the sub floor joint?

Also if using the screwed in 2 x 4 technique against the inner wall a bad idea where the 2x4 will be replaced with the last row? If so what would be the minimum numbers of rows acceptable to back fill?

thanks again

erik

Once you get the felt down you will need to pop a line anyway. I got away from using back up boards. Instead I prefer to take some ugly pieces of flooring and cut them into 8-12" pieces and use those along the staring line to back up the starting row..... this also keeps the starting row sitting flat as you nail.

The chalk line is a better go, since the plywood line will be concealed by your underlay paper. Building a "false wall" using a 2 X 4 is unecessary. I like the scrap flooring idea much better for reason mentioned in previous post by Gary.
Only the first board, and last two should be face nailed. Some installers, more clever than I perhaps, are able to blind nail even the second last board leaving only the first and last needing to be face nailed.

Personally, we do not even use the false wall method. We simply use chalk line at proper distance from the wall, face nail the board, near the groove edge, and toe nail alon the tongue to prevent the long edge from rising.

Thanks for the replies again. Got the nailer shoe prefinish kit in the mail today, so just waiting for some vents to come in and I ready to go.

Still confused, but now on scrap.

How is the scrap held down (gravity, foot, hand, or screw)?

Over wood, screw them down.