I am thinking (My wife wants), of laying new Maple floors in our bungalow. We are going to do the whole house (Yes, even the kitchen, but not the bathroom).
Since my current flooring is some kind of tongue and grooved fir, and there is no subfloor under that, the new flooring should go perpendicular to the existing. But if I lay 1/4 inch subflooring over the existing, can the new flooring go in the same direction as the old?
I was thinking about making a threshold with inlays of a contrasting wood. I am not sure if threshold is the proper term, but make a feature strip in the doorways. Just something simple, no amazing geometric patterns, maybe alternating strips of Cherry or Walnut. Can I build these ahead of time? Could I use a 1/4 inch plywood cut to the width and length of the door jam, then build my feature strips on them? Then glueing these in place with mastic and blind nailing them on either side and clamping them down with bricks? Then butt the new floor to the edge of these, and then sand the floor and finish?
Any thoughts on making and or buying wood heat vent covers, a friend of mine said that hers dried up and cracked, and not worth it. I have seen that you can buy the damper parts seperately from the covers, so I thought about making mine out of the same maple (my friends owns the mill were the maple is being milled).
Replies
the new flooring should be perpendicular to the floor joists.
Always? i read on the internet perpendicular to the existing? Your opnion makes more sense. Would I need trhe underlay?
if your existing fir subfloor is in good shape with no noticeable high spots put the new wood over it in the same direction as the fir, with no underlayment. Before you start walk around on the floor and find all squeeks and loose boards and renail.
as far as your threshold accent strips go;
start your courses for the main room from the doorway end with the tongues towards where you want your accent strip to be.
then you can blind nail the accent strips mated with main floor.
when you move to the adjacent room run your courses and when you get to the door start your courses at the door, mating the groove of the adjacent room with the tongue of the accents.
This way you won't have to face nail any boards at the door
Ouch,
In my opinion, if you are going to overlay the existing subfloor boards, you absolutely must go perpendicular. With plywood and OSB subfloor, either parallel or perp. are okay, but with a board floor, you want to span the ridges rather than run parallel. You will have a wavy floor if you run parallel.
If you really want to go with the boards, then an underlayment would be a good idea, as long as you can spare the height. Since you are doing the whole house, it sounds like you would have no problem with that. Thicker would be better, also. I would want at least 1/2" ply, but 5/8" or 3/4" would be even better.
Jon Blakemore
That is why i asked if the fir floor is good and flat.
if you run new wood right over the fir, perp. to the fir yes you span the waves in the floor. but the slight deflection of the fir will cause the new wood to squeek so bad you will wake the neighbors.
To my mind, the biggest reason for running the new overlaay perpendicular to the old is that you would have a certain percentage of your fasteners entering the old floor at a bad spot in the T&G joint of the existing. It would not get a good grip there and would brobably ssplinter out some of the old to the bottom.
If it were me, I would use 3/8" or 1/2" ply, glued and screwed over the old. Then I could run the new any direction I wanted to with no worry.
Excellence is its own reward!
As usual, Piffin's reply covers all the bases. If you want to skip the ply, then the new flooring should be perpendicular to the joists, regardless of the direction of the existing flooring. If you have seen how much wood moves around a heating vent, you will see that wood heat vent covers are not going to last. They look pretty though when new, especially the inset ones.
Tom
I don't see what the direction of the joists has to do with the direction of hardwood floors. Could someone explain that?
Jim,
The logic is that you want your finished floor to go perpendicular to the joists because the subfloor will deflect too much if you go parallel.
Jon Blakemore
I'm gonna have to ponder that one Jon. Are you saying 3/4" glued and screwed plywood deflects between joists 16" o.c.?
Tom - how long of nails do you use? If a 2", even 2+1/2" nail, nailed diagonally though the flooring, and the subfloor, penetrates the joist at all, it's not enough to have any holding power, is it?
Edited 4/10/2003 11:18:54 PM ET by jim blodgett
Maybe we could get luvditchburns over here to settle it,
because I have heard what Jon is saying and also been told by flooring guys that it doesn't matter with at least 3/4
I also know a flooring guy in Chicago, that says it would not be a problem to lay Parallel to the joist on 3/4 but he always uses at least a full inch of subfloor if he does run Parallel.
Edit, damn spell check, completly screwed my spelling of Parallel
View ImageGo Jayhawks..............Next Year
Edited 4/10/2003 11:22:14 PM ET by CAG
Lets compromise maybe ouch should run it on a diagonal. (only joking)
Jim,
No, I didn't say that, but if you got me in a corner, yes, I probably would say that.
Call me wasteful, anal, whatever, but I prefer a little more than 3/4" subfloor on a nice home. It seems that 3/4" is the minimum to use, they use it in cheap apartments and tract houses. GP has some 7/8" which I would like to walk on to get a feel for, and I've heard that they sell 1-1/8" plywood also. That would be a nice floor.
So, if I had my way, I would either lay perpendicular to the joists, or like CAG said, overlay with some 3/8" or something like that. Just makes for a nicer floor.
Jon Blakemore
I really wasn't thinking in terms of this particular posters original question, Jon. As I read through these answers I noticed at least one, maybe more, people stress the importance of installing strip flooring perpendicular to the joists, and that just didn't ring true. Would it be better if you could? Probably. Is it critical to a solid floor? I don't think it is. That's all I meant. But believe you me, I'm all ears.
And I'm really hoping someone can shed a little light on this "nailing into joists" idea, too. I'm not buying that one either. At least not if people still use the same type powernailers I usually rent.
I sure appreciate you defending your opinion though. Wish more people would be willing to have an open exchange of opinions and ideas and be less concerned with who they agree with. Thanks. An open exchange of ideas will only accelerate the evolution of our profession.
Jim,
"And I'm really hoping someone can shed a little light on this "nailing into joists" idea, too. I'm not buying that one either."
Me neither.
Maybe it makes a difference if your using nails instead of staples, but all the flooring work I've done is with a Bostitch stapler (great tool by the way). Using 2" staples, my math tells me that only about 1/4" of the staple would penetrate below the subfloor, if you have 3/4". And that's at an angle, so the vertical measurement is 3/16". Doesn't seem like much. I seem to remember reading some guys (might have been Ken Fisher) saying that they avoid nailing into joists, as they might hit a nail.
Maybe I'm missing something...
Jon Blakemore
I could care less about hitting a joist. I'm concentrating on keeping my schedule at 8"to 10". Besides, the floor is wrapped in felt, I can't see the sub joints or spikes.Ditch
Then again, maybe it wasn't Ken...
Jon Blakemore
Of course unless the subfloor is sturdy and thick enough to minimize deflection and hold the nails.
Tom
ouch, if you have any under counter appliances, ie dishwasher, keep an eye on height requirements. New floor vs old cabinets/ counter tops. Enjoy the project. Jim J
Ouch,
Lot's of good advice here. Piffin, Jon, and others are providing you with good info.
Original car decking, often times t&g fir or poplar, sometimes top-nailed, almost always ran at a diagonal. The floor direction then didn't matter because the diagonal sub-floor provided such longitudinal stability.
In your case, as already mentioned, the movement of the fir sub-floor will be more or less than that of the maple. If you run the new floor in the same direction of the sub-floor you are creating a grudge match between the two. Piffin brings up the point of driving rows of fasteners into weak parts of the subfloor, like between boards, Murphy will insure that this happens on at least a few rows, creating snap, crackle, pop.
The 1/4" underlay will not provide any measurable purchase for the fasteners. I only use 1/4" underlay when I need to elevate the floor.
Kaufman, in jest, provided a reasonable alternative. Install the new floor on a diagonal. This reverses the old car decking method of installation which was and is very stable. You'll have good purchase, alleviate multi species movement, and create a drastic positive visual image.
You can sand the old floor flat with a couple of drum passes to knock the high spots down. This will aid installation and allow the new floor a tighter fit. Be sure to use 15# felt under the new maple floor.
Ditch
Example:Ditch
I would like to thank all of you, and all of your solutions. Your like a carpenter in the back pocket.
This is what I am thinking, I have about a good inch of play under the front door. And I don't want to cut that down or replace it, I just refinished it last summer. So, I am going to screw down the squickey spots and run perpendicular.
Thanks for the reminder on the undercabinet appliances, I just thought of that this morning, I'm in the middle of the Kitchen reno right now. My current counter hieght (underneath) is 34 5/8" and the new dishwasher needs a clearence of 34", can I cheat on the new counter, and bump it up with spacers. I guess it really depends on the lip of the counter.
Gosh, I wish I would thought of the forum sooner, I have owned a house for five years and have depended on Home Depot, Norm, Bob, Tom, and other Saturday morning television personalities ( I have been watching for a long time, when my mother yelled at me to stop watching cartoons, I fliped over to PBS and have been watching since I was 13). I do have inlaws in the profession, but like they say "the carpenter house is never finished", so I hate to bother them. Eventhough I do offer my help, they never seem to take me up on it. I think it's because they always scratch there heads really hard when I say, "Well on TV they did it.....". No one likes an armchair carpenter I guess.
Thanks again!
About screwing down the squeaky ones - There are a number of reasons that floors squeak. If irt is bewcause of riding up and down on a nail, the screw tightening will help. But if it is two pieces of T&G rubing togedther from the stress and movement between joists, the scewing won't do much. By gluing the ply to the existing, you would make it all one and eliminate the squeeks. Be a good idea to identify source of sound to plan for eliminating it.
Sounds like you are fitting pretty tight there at the DW! Any way to shim up the cabs?.
Excellence is its own reward!
You make a valid point about the squeaky floors, I probably wouldn't of thought about it until the screw did nothing. Thanks for the heads up..
About the cabs, I can't shim them up because they are the existing ones that are built the "old fashion way" (sorry, no other way to describe it, possibly "proper way") I am adding new cabs (which I built, buying at home depot, way to expensive) to make it more of a u shape kitchen, but the only spot for the dishwasher is in the old cabinets.
Once it's done and if it looks okay, I will post a picture. On the existing doors and the new doors, we are(My Wife wants) adding molding to make them look like shaker style doors and then having someone in to paint them all alike. I let my wife come up with the ideas, so I can buy the tools to do the job. So far though, we can't (Wife does not want to) afford a truck to bring home materials. Have you ever tried to bring home a sheet of drywall in a Toyota corolla? Let me tell ya, it's not pretty.
LOL
Bringing home only one sheet of SR in ANYTHING is not a pretty affair!
Of course MY wife only wants what I want...
(shucks, there goes all my credibility, LOL).
Excellence is its own reward!
It sounds like you have a very good understanding of your position before the wife.
That's one of the perks of being in the business. You can use the line "but I need this great tool to make money..."
Then you just pray that she's buying it.
Jon Blakemore
Over the weekend my sister and husband was over to hold our new baby (He's the Carpenter), he stepped on the squeaks and said it not from deflection, (Yeah!) it from the previous owner nailing down the boards. Nothing a few good deck screws and wood glues can't fix. Although he would still replace the existing floor, and replace it with 3/4" or better subfloor, to make sure there would be no problems in the future. "Carpenters always hate call backs"
After cutting out the cupboards to make room for the dishwasher in the kitchen, I realized I am going to score another 3/8" plus the thickness of the existing flooring, because I will be removing that stuff to make way for the new hardwood. I guess there is light at the end of every tunnel