I am about to glue down Santos Mahogany T-moldings between the engineered wood and ceramic tile and had a few questions:

1. Do you simply glue down the "nub" of the T-mold to the underlying concrete subfloor (at the expansion space) or do you also have to glue to the T-mold to the tile?

2. I saw an installation video on youtube that describes attaching a rubber rail along the T-molding's nub and then gluing that to the concrete substrate. Is this a necessary step or is it standard to simply glue the T-mold directly to the concrete?

3. As far as adhesive is concered, is Chemrex CX-948 the best product for this?

Thanks in advance!

Yes, glue the "leg" of the t-moulding to the concrete ( I usually run a bead on the concrete, and the leg). You may want to tape the moulding in place. Depending how it fits, you may want to weight it down overnight. It doesn't hurt to glue to the tile as well. Main concern is to keep the expansion space at the hardwood free of glue. Before gluing, I will scarify or abraid the concrete, then clean it, to allow for good adhesive bite.

The video you saw with the "rubber rail", I would think was a "track". Tracks are usually supplied for laminate t-mouldings, but not usually supplied for hardwood.

Adhesive....Not familiar with Chemrex, I use PL 400.

Thanks for the advice, Floorologist.

Chemrex adhesive works great, you can dampen the floor slightly help to cure the glue. Just be sure to not leave any adhesives on anything it does not belong on as it is nearly impossible to remove after it is cured.

I think the chemrex and Pl premium are basically the same thing, mositure cure urethane

I like to drill a hole in the concrete 1/2, 5/8 3/4,. Glue a dowel and and brad it.

Keith

Keith, what a great idea. I'm definitely going to try that out, bet it works great . That would solve the problem of taping & weighting, plus give that much more support.

Keith, do you mean like the one in this picture? That takes alot of work. I drill out the hole in the T-strip for the dowel a tad tight and pound it in there then glue it in the holes in the concrete. The holes in the crete are not as tight but with the adhesive there is no need to weight it down. No, I don't do it all the time. lol

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13772863@N08/5245529438/

Great idea, that looks like an inventive royal pain. The way I took it was drilling the concrete and plugging it. So you can topnail a pin or a brad into the plug.

That might be a better idea. But I find brads don't always travel straight through hardwoods. Had a few do some U-turns

I always drill a pilot hole when topnailing.

I dont drill into the transition, but an interesting idea. I just had trouble finding enough weight for all the doorways on some of the jobs and found this method was faster in the long run and less chance of locking the floor in place. Seen a few buckle from the glue.

Keith

It would be nice if someone develpoed a snap in track for hardwoods like laminate has. The leg of the T's are never long enough to hit the concrete half the time anyways and I have to shim alot. Hate that

Yea, but they are real pain when working with angles.

I end up snapping the track on the molding before I cut it, or I cut the molding to length and the track about ½" shorter and snap it on the bottom before I glue the molding with the track attached, to the substrate.