Hello..!!

I have been lurking for a little while reading all kinds of posts on the board, but this is my first actual post.

Looking to take on a project laying hardwood floor throughout all of my 1st floor rooms. I will leave the stairs and landing alone, and still undecided on the WC.

Never done a HW floor before but I am pretty handy with tools and projects in general, and excited to have a go at this.

Subfloor is 3/4 plywood. Chosen floor is 4.75 x 3/4 Acacia in a tobacco swirl pattern.

I wanted to start with the family room, but it is very challenging for a number of reasons and have decided that it is probably best to leave that until the end. I will certainly return for more advice nearer the time..!!

The (hopefully) attached diagram shows a rough layout of the house, including flooring joist direction. Quite a lot of the rooms have wide opening without doors, and I have have marked those with doors on the diagram. The diagram is not exactly to scale by any means, but it's close and certainly a good representation.



Any advice on which room to start with, as well as which wall are VERY welcome. I am also interested in opinions on how to flow the HW from room to room.

Thanks..!!

Dave.

I'm a DIYer also and have just completed replacing the wall-to-wall carpeting in 6 rooms of my house. I read a few books and asked lots of questions before I started and got lots of different opinions but there were common threads. Joists run right to left in your diagram so flooring should run top to bottom. I'm sure most pros would say run a baseline straight down the middle of the house from the kitchen/dinette area though the hallway and then work from this line in both directions to get one continuous floor. To do this you would have to prep a lot of work area and unless you are able to work fast and have help you would have a lot of disruption in a house that you are living in. Also, what do you want in the doorway/passages between rooms? One school of thought is to have the flooring flow from room to room with all flooring running in the same direction with no transitions, thresholds, or headers. Another school of thought is to have transitions/thresholds/headers between rooms the reasoning being that if one room had to have its floors refinished there would be a separation.....this also allows you to install the flooring in one room at a time. Also, if you wanted a flow with no transitions you would have to be working on more than one room at the same time.
Question is what do you want the look to be and can you accomplish it in a house that is inhabited?
Aside from all of the above I would start in the room that could be out of commission the longest without disrupting the family while you hone your technique and skills.....i.e. the learning curve.

Thanks for your reply, Jimmie.

Couple of oops moments from my last thread that I want to correct;-

1) Actually post an active link of my floor plan this time.

2) My joists actually run the opposite direction to which I thought they did....too much in my head with this new house and a new job at the same time..!!




More to come shortly....

Measure everything before you start to see what's square and what isn't so you can plan for and make adjustments in inconspicuous areas. Also, make sure you take focal points into account with your layout so that they get priority and look right. Again, if you want all to flow well you'll probably wind up installing in more than one room at a time unless you separate them with headers/flush thresholds. All the books I have read and advice I have gotten say to spend lots of time planning the layout.

As mentioned in a prior post, I want to install hardwood flooring in all my 1st floor rooms with the exception of the laundry room. To start the project I was intending to begin installation with the Living Room, Dining Room and Office; the 3 rooms on the right hand side of the house.

Approx dimensions are:-

- Living Room - 20' x 13'
- Dining Room - 11' x 12'
- Office - 11' x 8'

Walking through the front door into the tiled hallway, the Living Room is immediately on the right.




The Dining Room flows from the Living Room.




And the Office is at the end of the house, off from the Dining Room.

This past weekend I tore up the old carpet, underlay and carpet gripper rods. I also removed the baseboards and prepped the floor.

I discovered that I have 2 layers of plywood, giving me a little more than an inch of total underlayment thickness.




This is because the electrical conduit is running at floor level.




Even though I can technically run the flooring in either direction now, I still plan to run perpendicular to the joists as my wife likes the direction of the flooring this way.

My big question is whether I should mark a center baseline (at the border of the Living Room and Dining Room) and lay flooring in both directions outward from there, or to start in the Living Room and keep moving up through the Dining Room and Office..??

Which one will make it easier to line up the hallway and Kitchen/Dinnette when I get around to those as well..??

I'd go with the center baseline and see if that will calculate out so that everything comes out square and you don't wind up with unsightly tapered pieces at the walls. If that baseline doesn't extend through the office door measure back from the baseline to see what the office layout will look like. Don't want transitions/flush thresholds at the doorways between living room and dining room and dining room and office?