Can I install engineered flooring at right angles?

[DavidA1982]

Hi all

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

 

[cjard]

Rip up that small patch of wrong way floorboards and replace with ply of equivalent thickness and floor throughout?

 

[DavidA1982]

Thanks - that is certainly worth a try. The problem is that I have actually had the builder do quite a lot of work to that part of the house and the staircase now extends two steps on to those wrong-way-around floorboards, so the bottom two steps sort-of sit on top of the boards that I would have to rip up. I will take a look and see if cutting them is feasible.

 

[cjard]

Lay them at 45 degrees ? Makes for an interesting feature and achieves the same intent as a 90 degree lay, namely that a crossply structure is achieved and therefore no coinciding edges occur between the layers, where differential movement over time could damage the joint

Use a self levelling compound to flush the tiled area with the rest of the floor, and floor over it?

 

[DavidA1982]

Thanks. 45 degrees would look great. I had a play around with it, and I think it will be beyond my skill to do it well enough. Paying someone to do it is not an option as we are totally skint and it can't really wait as my wife is pregnant.

I think I'm going to go for 12mm ply, and just find some 14mm boards that work. That is a total floor height of 31mm including the underlay, which just about fits under the front door. I will have to put something under the 25mm thresholds to raise them up 6mm. I really, really hope this doesn't mean that I need to shave anything off the bottoms of the doors!

 

[DavidA1982]

A quick follow up question: any reason why I would not use softwood plywood to overboard? Thanks

 

[cjard]

45 is no harder than 90 with a sliding compound mitre saw. When you are measuring edges for cuts you essentially have a "long edge" or a "short edge" depending on how your plank meets the wall. You measure the length that is going in and then look at the space you're filling to see whether you just measured a long or a short, and configure the saw accordingly. I find it most useful to draw a mark on the plank in the direction I'm expecting the cut to run in case I forgot by the time I got to the saw

It may be e case that your wall isn't true, so you need a slightly different cut angle. You can go for an angle finder type ruler (my trend digital one was a tenner), or you can have just a large set square with measurements on; you lie the plank down in line with the board edge where it will go, put the square on the wall and note the measurement on the square that coincides with your pencil Mark on your plank, then transfer he set square to the other side of the plank and pencil the same measurement. THe line between the two is your wall to plank angle..

my OH is 8 months gone and was helping me install Karndean at 45 degrees last weekend, apparently a very relaxing position, being on all fours. Might be able to get that line to work to my advantage again