How to Lay Hardwood Flooring in Different Rooms Without Transitions

Floating floors flow easily from one room to the next.

Once an expensive and labor-intensive choice in flooring, hardwood floors made of engineered materials are comparable to carpeting in price and easier to keep clean and free of allergens. New floating floors -- floors laid over a vapor barrier with padding -- make installation simple for do-it-yourself homeowners. Once the old floor is stripped, cleaned and leveled, the new underlayment provides a sound-muffling layer. Floating hardwood floors may be installed at or below ground level. Plan for seamless transitions through doorways as you begin laying a floor that will cover more than one room.

Things You'll Need

• Moisture barrier (on- or below-grade installations only)
• Black felt 15 pound weight or 1/8 to 1/4-inch cork underlayment
• Floating floor 1/8-inch foam underlayment
• Masking or duct tape
• Flooring planks
• Hammer and 2-by-4 scrap
• Jig saw
• Table saw
• Jamb saw or hand saw

Instructions

1. 

   Remove baseboard from doorways without frames.

   Lay a piece of scrap underlayment and flooring against a door frame to use as a guide and cut just an inch deep until you can remove the base of the frame. Repeat on the other side of the door. Then cut the jamb using your guides. Make these three horizontal cuts at the base of each side of the door frame, being careful to avoid cutting the framing behind them.

2. Lay the vapor barrier and felt or cork in both rooms through the door. Follow with the thin foam padding, leaving 1/2 inch around the edges for expansion. Tape the edges under the door frames in the same manner as other edges.

3. 

   Lay planks across or through doorways parallel to longest wall.

   Begin laying wood along the longest wall in the room. If this wall is the one the door is on, start on the end of that wall and work toward the door. If the longest wall is perpendicular to the wall the door is on, start on those walls in both rooms at once and work toward the door.

4. Notch the pieces of wood to fit the doorway, leaving 1/2-inch expansion ease all the way around the door underneath the door frame.

5. Tilt flooring planks into the lapped edges under door frames or across thresholds. Make an upside-down V with two to ease under the opposite side of the door if the flooring is installed across the threshold.

Tips & Warnings

• The tongue-and-groove planks in floating floors are glued. Some have specially-cut tongues and grooves that click-lock. Many of these floors may also be stapled to a wood floor with a felt or cork underlayment. The only difference the type of floor makes at the door will be in the height of the undercut.

• Follow the directions for attaching underlayment found on the packaging; some require stapling and some require gluing with a latex adhesive.

• Tape the underlayment as you put it down, but try to avoid forming seams in doorways; place seams beyond the door on either side to avoid separation in cold or dry weather.

• Put blue painter’s tape around the bottom of the door frame and flooring planks where they must be cut to size. Saw through it to keep wood splintering to a minimum.

References

• Popular Mechanics: How to Build a Hardwoord Floor This Weekend
• Hosking Hardwood: All About Floating Wood Floors
• Floorfacts.com: Installing an Engineered Wood Floor

Resources

• Popular Mechanics: The Science of Flooring
• Mother Earth News: Installing Hardwood Flooring