Design question. My house is shaped like a slightly rectangular box. My living room in the NorthWest corner, my kitchen on the adjacent NE corner both by a wall, except where they meet at a common hallway. The hallway then heads down towards the two bedrooms at the other two corners (SE and SW. Makes sense?

The 3 1/4" maple planks flooring in one bedroom runs West to East. All the other rooms will run W to E also. I want to start on the other bedroom but I'm afraid that when the two rooms meet at the common hallway that the planks wont perfectly line up. How do I prevent the planks from not meshing perfectly when two rooms eventually meet?

Second question. My layout also means that my only hallway wont be running lengthwise. I dont care for that look but it's either that or have four rooms that connect to the common hallway will be running different directions. Is this pretty much a personal preference type thing or will my hallway look weird with lots of short board?

Don't do both rooms and expect it to be perfectly lined up!!! Things happen!


Start in one room. Come out of the room and use a slip spline to reverse direction into the other room.

Slip tongues are a beautiful thing.

Turn the hall, and run it length wise. Then do the rooms. Halls should run the length; never see a site finished job that ran across.

Splines it is, and turn the hallways. Gotcha. I didn't find anything on Bellawood's site and a search on the internet turned up a few results. Can I buy splines anywhere?

Thanks again. This site has been invaluable to my flooring project's success.

I made my own. I had to buy a large sheet of 4X8 1/8" plywood and cut it. That was all I could find to use for spline.
Good luck