Just completed (or almost completed) putting down 400 sq ft of 3/4" hardwood floors.
The problem is around the front and rear door. In order to leave the 1/2" for expansion that the manuf recommends, I need to be able to run the wood under the threshold. On the back door I could raise the threshold to accommodate this but on the side facing out it will just be 3/4" above everything else and leave a gap!!!
On the front door I can't figure out how to raise the threshold at all. Even if I could I would need a shorter door and that's hard to do with a firewall type of door.
I handled this installation pretty well up until this point. Any suggestions?? Thanks in advance.
Know anyone that does woodwork? You can either make a new threshold or possibly rout out the existing one so the flooring goes under it. Or leave the 1/2" gap and use a trim pieces to go over the flooring to allow movement. Hard to say what to do not seeing your setup, but any good woodworker can make or modify something to fit.
Why do they call for this 1/2" gap everywhere? The baseboard I used didn't cover it, so I had to then add corner molding around the baseboard to hide the gaps. And nothing has ever moved. It's nailed down. WHere is it going to go?
Afterwards the carpenters that did most of the work building our house told me I should have gone right up to the edge of everything, with virtually no gaps.
Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!
I assume your external doors open inward; I've not seen an outward opening door in a home. Your first step is to measure the distance between the top of your new floor and the bottom of your opened door. If this is less than a quarter inch (preferably a half inch) you are going to have to cut the door.
Assuming you have enough space, or after you have shortened the door, you will need to fabricate a new threshold that incorporates a lip at the inside edge that will cover the gap and reach over the new floor. You will probably want to fit the threshold on top of the old one, and taper it to minimize the tripping hazard. ............ . . . ............ . . ...............
Someth> Just completed (or almost completed) putting down 400 sq ft of 3/4" hardwood > floors.
Don't know exactly what the affected area looks like....but I wouldn't touch the thresholds unless absolutely necessary! I recently finished a similar job...approx. 400 sq ft of 3/4" hardwood.
However, the front door has a small enclosed mud-room/foyer/whatever-you-want-to-call-it-in-your-region. Due to the grit that comes in, we decided to do that section in ceramic tile. It has worked very well....
For the back door, we were going to run hardwood all the way up to the door. After careful consideration, we decided instead to place a small ceramic floor in that area (a 2' x 3' rectangle). This section was 'picture framed' by 3 pieces of hardwood....I must say, it looks very sharp.
As a bonus, anyone entering from the back door doesn't need to step on the hardwood with dirty/gritty shoes. We are very happy with the end result. Originally, I thought we couldn't install tile due to the lack of rigidity in our subfloor (5/8" ply directly over joists). However, I found a product that (when installed correctly) is warranted to prevent any tiles from cracking. It's called Schluter-Ditra, and it's expensive ($2 sq ft in my area). But it will result in a floor that's slightly lower than your hardwood (I'd guess
1/4"). In my situation, vertical clearance was not an issue, so we adjusted the ceramic to be flush with the hardwood.
Alternately, just don't run your hardwood all the way up to the threshold...and use some (small) molding to cover the gap. You may have to cut/scribe it to fit under the lip of the threshold. After all, the 1/2" gap is a minimum requirement, so it's ok to have a 3/4" gap between hardwood and threshold.
BTW....if you have 1/2" sheetrock walls, you should be able to install your hardwood with virtually no gap between the hardwood and the plane of the wall. The sheetrock should not go all the way down to the floor, which should automatically leave 1/2" gap between the hardwood and the bottom plate. If the sheetrock is low, just cut back (up) until you've got 3/4" of vertical space. When you place baseboards back on the wall, there should be very few places where a gap is showing.
Where gaps *do* show, I would use a little 'trick'. Take a small piece of cardboard (from the hardwood flooring box, naturally) and placed it behind the lower part of the baseboard. This will likely push the bottom of the molding out far enough to cover any remaining gap. I dislike the idea of adding an extra quarter-round or scotia molding on top of the baseboard.....I think it detracts from the overall look.
Larry ( snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net) wrote: : Just completed (or almost completed) putting down 400 sq ft of 3/4" hardwood : floors.
: The problem is around the front and rear door. In order to leave the 1/2" : for expansion that the manuf recommends, I need to be able to run the wood : under the threshold. On the back door I could raise the threshold to : accommodate this but on the side facing out it will just be 3/4" above : everything else and leave a gap!!!
: On the front door I can't figure out how to raise the threshold at all. : Even if I could I would need a shorter door and that's hard to do with a : firewall type of door.
: I handled this installation pretty well up until this point. Any : suggestions?? Thanks in advance.
Some places have thresholds that might work. For my deck door I found a
1x4x6 of red oak and literally planed down and sanded one corner, long edgewise. When I put it in the board looked like it had a bullnose edge. Works great. This simply butts up to the bottom casing of the sliding deck door. You might to do two sides for a true threshold.
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