How To Lay Engineered Wood Flooring On Joists

Making the right decisions before you lay your flooring particularly in a situation where you re laying flooring directly over joists is always time well spent.

How to lay engineered wood flooring on joists.

Engineered wood flooring offers the timeless look of hardwood but is perfect for basements and other areas where moisture can be an issue. While personal preference is a factor the direction in which you run hardwood flooring boards is governed by visual and structural guidelines. Keep joints that line up at least two rows apart. Lay one row of floorboards along the entire length of the working line.

Secret nail in each joist. If you can feel some deflection you have two options. How to install hardwood flooring diagonal to floor joists. Follow these steps to install an engineered wood floor in your home.

Install hardwood floors perpendicular to the floor joists parallel to the longest wall leaving a inch expansion gap around the perimeter. Before starting calculate the width the last row will be. If raising the floor height is not a problem you can install a layer of 1 2 inch plywood over the existing 3 4 inch plywood. During the installation of flooring push or gently tap boards flush to the previous row.

A friend told me that i should lay the wood across the joists and that would mean running the wood parallel to the windows. If you are planning an engineered wood flooring installation on a ground floor it is important not to install your flooring directly over a ventilated cavity. I m about to lay hardwoods in my house and i ve heard that you should lay them perpendicular to the windows so the light doesn t reflect off the gaps in the boards. Join the ends of the boards over a floor joist where possible avoiding joints that form an h.

Lisa lisa good question. Secret nail every 200 300mm. The other option assuming you have access to the open joists from below is to install 2x4 blocking between the joists 24 inches on center. For plank or panelled subfloors.

Floorboard direction is an important decision when planning a hardwood floor and there is more than one reason to install them diagonally.