I am nailing down prefinished 3/4" brazilian cherry in my living room (12'x20'). The subfloor is 1/2" ply with another 3/4" ply on top of it. The joists run along the longer dimension of the room so my wood is laid along the short length of the room. Visually not too appealing but my furniture layout etc will make it work well.

At the end of the room, the outside wall that runs parallel to the joists, starting at about 18"-2ft away from the wall the floor sneaks up about 1/3" of an inch from the flat part of the floor so that the highest point is at the wall. The rest of the room is flat/level. There is a finished basement below and I will not have access to the joists. How do I handle this rise?

- I can use a planer to knock off the 1/3" but I do not know how to get to the wall.

- I can shim with a 1/4" plywood and #30 felt, but that requires running the shim to the far into flat part of the room and seems like a waste of good flat space.

- I can use some sort of wide decorative border in the room perhaps

thank you for any ideas on how I can handle this.

Also I am using #30 roofing felt in a couple of other locations and was warned by some flooring people that the chemicals in the roofing material can seep into the floor over time and stain the floor, has anybody seen this happen?

thanks

Ok, you don't need to run the flooring at 90 degrees to the joists BECAUSE of the thickness of the plywood you have down. It's 1&1/4" total with the joists 16" oc, right? That's plenty stiff to carry the floor so you can run parallell to the joists. About that .33" too high at the wall, what I and most pros would do is take an edger sander with course sandpaper and sand it down. Your subfloor and underlayment are thick enough so just sand it down flat. 30 lb. felt isn't needed but also, it's NOT gonna seep through 3/4"'s of solid wood. I wouldn't take any advice from those "flooring people". Simply sand your plywood seams flat and sand down any high spots. If you have low spots, you can use the 30 lb. felt to shim those. Make sure that 3/4" ply over your subfloor is well attached.

Thank you for your ideas. I will sand it down. Would it be any quicker or easier to use a drum sander or a hand power planer instead? I plan to set the nails below the surface and then renail/screw it down once I am done flattening it.

thank you again.

For me, an edger sander with 20 grit works fine. You can use whatever you like. I've used power planers before and they work ok as well. Of course a big drum sander would make short work of it as well but may be a bit overkill it this case and it won't get all the way to the wall and you'll still need to edge the last few inches anyway.