I need to floor my hallway. The wife has decided that we are having engineered wood. It is a 1930s house with wooden floorboards that are in pretty decent shape. The hall is long and mostly narrow, so I want to install the boards so they run from the front door in to the house, rather than across. I had planned to install 20mm engineered multi-ply boards on top of duralay duratex insulation, directly over to the existing floorboards as a floating floor. However, there are 2 problems:
1) I understand that as I plan to install the boards on top of the existing floor without lining with ply first, I have to install them at right angles to the existing floorboards. Happily for most of the hallway this is easy as the floorboards currently run "across" the hall rather than "along" it. However at the foot of the stairs there is a small area, about 2m x 1m, where they run in the opposite direction. The blue lines on the attached pic show the direction the existing floorboards boards run in.
2) At the far end of the hall there is an old tiled hearth area. it is flush with the floorboards within a mm or two.
So for the first problem: can I simply run the new engineered boards at 90 degrees to these too? this means that at the foot of the stairs there would be a line where I would be joining the boards at right angles if you see what I mean. I think this would look OK if it is possible to do it without having a wobbly floor.
If not: is my only choice to ply-line the floor first and then install all boards in the same direction? The problem I have is that if I add 12mm of ply, the floor level would rise so much that it would be above the bottom of the front door. So I would have to find 14mm boards that I liked. I could just about get away with the 20mm boards on top of 6mm ply I think (or 18mm boards on 9mm ply), but is 6mm ply or 9mm ply too thin to bother with? And I have carpet in two of the adjoining rooms off the hall, so the step down in to those rooms would not be insignificant. I have 25mm solid wood threshold strips in all doorways so I would have to somehow boost those up a bit too if I ply-line the hall first.
For the second problem: are there any issues there?
Any comments or suggestions would be gratefully received! Thanks
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