How to Plan a Wood Floor

Wood flooring is installed in courses, with boards attaching to each other via tongue-and-groove milling on the sides. Installation usually begins along the longest wall in the room. It's unlikely the courses will fit perfectly across the width of the room, so it's important to calculate where the final course will end up in relation to the wall. Otherwise, you may end up having to cut and install a 1-inch strip of flooring. With proper planning, you can avoid that by splitting the difference between the first and last courses.

Things You'll Need

• Pry bar
• Hammer
• Tape measure
• Pencil
• Chalk snap line
• Table saw
• Safety goggles

Instructions

1. Remove the floor trim using a hammer and pry bar. Measure out 1/2 inch from the wall where you want the first course of flooring to start. Mark the 1/2-inch space at both ends of the wall.

2. Stretch a chalk line between the two marks and snap it, leaving a straight line on the floor 1/2 inch from the wall. Do the same thing on the opposite wall. These will be your starting and ending lines for the flooring, with the gap near the walls giving the wood room to expand. The gap will be covered up later by floor trim.

3. Measure the width of a floorboard. Measure from one chalk line to the other on the opposite wall, and divide by the width reading. Use the result to calculate how much space will be left between the last course of flooring and the far wall. For example, if the room is 130 inches wide, and the floorboards are 4 inches wide, you'll be able to fit 32 floorboards totaling 128 inches on the floor, and you'll have 2 inches of space left at the wall.

4. Determine the correct starting and ending widths of your floorboards by adding the leftover space to the full width of a floorboard, then dividing it in half. For example, 2 inches of leftover space added to the width of a 4-inch floorboard, totals 6 inches and then divided in half equals 3.

5. Cut the boards lengthwise for the first course, according to your calculations. Cut from the grooved side of the boards. Lay the flooring with the cut side on the chalk line, sitting 1/2 inch from the wall.

6. Proceed to lay and secure the whole floor according to the instructions that came with the flooring system. At the last course, use your table saw to cut the boards lengthwise to the same width as the first course, cutting off the grooved side. The cut side should come to the chalk line, 1/2 inch from the wall. Install floor trim to cover the gaps at the walls.

Tips & Warnings

• Wear safety goggles when cutting the boards.

References

• Lowes.com: Floor Layout.