Solid Wood Floors: Advice needed

[d1ynovice]

Hello

I have bought some solid wood floors. The guidlines from the manuafacturer are to lay the boards with tongue facing the wall, I have done this and it seems to look ok. The guidlines also state a 12mm expanion gap. This gap must include the tongue??. I have done this but the gap is now quite big as it includes 12mm as well as 5mm tongue? I am having difficulty finding trim that will cover this size of gap? Could I reduce the gap and basically ignore the tongue or must the expansion gap include this in the measurement?

Many thanks,

 

[dextrous]

Can you not trim the tongue off?

 

[WoodYouLike]

Every manufacturer to its own, but starting with the Tongue towards the wall is rather strange in our opinion.
Normally you start with the groove toward the wall so of the next row the groove can be glued when you have to board in your hand and then slides over the Tongue of the earlier row.
In this case the tongue facing the wall does need to have room to expand too, again another "clue" that the instruction of the manufacturer are rather strange because it does mean you need a 12mm gap between wall and tongue.

 

[mointainwalker]

@OP

I'm a bit puzzled. You say initially you have laid the flooring.

If you have done so, how can you now reduce the gap ?

If you do have the possiblity to do so, trim off the tongue- it's not serving any purpose just sitting in space.

 

[angle2]

Hello

Advice the Solid wood flooring is exactly as it sounds, the individual boards of the floor are made from one continuous plank of wood as apposed to engineered woods which are solid wood veneer on top of a ply base.

Thanks