Wife says she REALLY wants the slats to go at a 45 perpendicular to the 45 that is in the ajoining room. And a border of one strip cherry too, each side! I dread having to cut off the excess with a circular saw when I run into both ends of the hall, each side.

Thoughts?

I personally think the rustick maple looks a little close to the cherry, so I would be debaiting running the maple a different direction.

There are some nice things about the 45 down the hall:

1) Easy to hammer compared to the parallel approach (and banging into walls).

2) I can plan nearly a full cherry border by cutting the correct amount off the edge.

3) I don't need to "spline" the center board.

Don't forget to see the pic on the bottom of p.5 of this thread.

I was thinking about running the field on a diagonal too. Your wife is a smart lady.

You will have some trouble nailing off each end on a 45... the walls are in your way.

A few points in this post...

I bit the bullet and bought the Fein Multimaster. I was able to negotiate 10% off the "FMM250TOP" unit at my local Woodcrafter's store and now I know what all the hype was about. I could have saved 30 minutes by "cutting" rather than chiseling the bottoms of those door jambs inside that first room. And I wouldn't have split the edge of the molding on one side of the door with my last chisel whack and had to wait two additional days to allow for the repair to cure and then re-chisel (and I sharpened this chisel to a razor's edge capable of shaving the hair off my arm!) The Multimaster is a huge time saver. More about this unit later.

We decided to go with a one strip of Tigerwood border with a field of 45 degree angled rustic maple at right angles to the 45 field in the bedroom. We also decided NOT to use any quarter round trim pieces at the bottom of the hall, so all baseboards, fake columns and door mouldings needed to be trimmed 3/4" + 1/16" for the cherry border. The task was then figuring out how to cut the field and border, and in what order. At first, we thought of doing the field first, then trimming away the excess with a circular saw as we did in the bedroom, but this posed two problems, one that I could not solve. First, I'd have to cut the field on both sides and the circular saw would leave 6"-12" uncut due to clearance issues. Those areas would have to be chiseled/routed/Multimastered away, not a task I was eagerly awaiting. Secondly, and most importantly, I could not get the Tigerwood under the floor molding or jambs with such small clearance underneath so tight to the wall. So we decided to establish the border first then fill in the field. The job becomes very straightforward, but very tedious as each row of boards needs one end board custom cut in lengh to achieve a tight fit. Also, the ends of each strip need to have a groove cut to fit the Tigerwood tongue that is facing the center of the field from each side of the hall. I started from the corner gluing in a triangular piece and kept building off that with a few 45 degree cuts. I soon change the angle to 46 degrees as that allowed for a perfect fit for the full length spans. The adjacent corner was a tough fit! I need to fine tune one length of board with two perpendicular 45 degree cuts giving unequal lengths to fit the adjacent corner of the field. And, oh, both 45s needed grooves routed in them to fit the Tigerwood tongues.

Again, I couldn't have prepared the hallway without the Multimaster (sorry if this is sounding like a commericial) given the amount of trim nails I hit throughout the preparation and the number of times I need to gain 1/32" added clearance under the molding at the back surface where it contacts the drywall. I don't know any other way of cutting a nail that is angled at a 45 and situated entirely behind the floor molding within 1" of the floor. Can't chisel it; can't pull it out with a claw hammer or pliers. The four corners that the crane jamb saw couldn't reach into were a breeze too with the Fein cutting clearance in each corner in about 30 seconds (chisel would have taken 15-30 minutes not counting the repair of a possible split molding).

Another setback occured when we measured and found the hall 1/2" out of parallel on one side where all the doorways were situated. To keep the Tigerwood parallel, and most visible in the straight sections of the hallway, I needed to glue additional 1/4" to 3/4" ripped pieces to the Tigerwood border to properly fit under the molding at the wide end of the hall. This necessitated a few trips to the table saw and band saw and added another 1/2 hour of measuring and cutting time.

Another Sunday is spent and I only progressed about 10 feet down the hallway. Unfortunately Charter is down so I can't post a pic of the progress, but suffice it to say that it will be slow going, maybe two feet every hour on average (and I've got another 26 feet to go!) But it does look very good!

A Sunday spent measuring and cutting:

You're doing a fein ..... I mean fine job.... keep at it.

Looks really good (and I just LOVE doing exact 45 degree cuts on both sides) and all the routing, good times I tell ya
LOL

You have done an outstanding job!

Yes, and every row is a trip downstairs to my stationary router table. I'm working on doing two rows at a time but I 'm not there yet.

So.... 36ft*(12 in/ft)*(row/2.25in)*(sin45deg)*(trip/row)= 136 trips downstairs!!!

those cuts take me a time or two or threee to get to my liking, so that would be 408 trips for me, I can olny imagine how many stairs LOL

I first cut one 45 (actually a 46) and fit the piece(s) into place to measure where to cut the opposite 45 plus 1/16". Then I take both pieces to route the groove about 3/32" deeper than needed. Then I nail the first board and 2nd board (if in middle), then fine tune the last board. I only need to trim off a little so the groove is still deep enough to fit.

My local Lowes is discounting a nice Freud portable router table for $169. But then I'll need another router to fit under it! My knees are telling me "go for it".

I use a small bosch router, no table, nice palm sized, I sometimes put it in my pocket

You use the Bosch "Colt" handheld?