Which direction to run hardwood florring in long hallway????

[Leslie Gossett]

Yea, sounds like my kind of woman too. We Gossetts pop up in the oddest places!

[Doug Miller]

Like killfiles...

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

[Leslie Gossett]

Whats that suppose to mean?

[retireb]

Matt,

I had a hall that was 77 feet by 42 inches. I installed the flooring cross ways because of the difficulty of nailing the flooring down without hitting the wall. However, I did not consider wood movement enough. 77 feet of flooring has to move, even in an air conditioned house. After a couple of years, I got 40 feet of washboarding, where the wood expanded (across it's width -- I used 4 inch quartersawn red oak flooring). Another hall, 16 feet long at one end of the longer hall has shown no problems, so I would guess that its the aggregate length that contributed to the problem. Yes, I let the wood acclimate for 2 full weeks, in the rooms along the hall, with the bundles open and spread out. I don't know how long your hall is, and only about the middle of my hall washboarded. I didn't want to surface nail one third of the oak pieces, which I would have had to do if I had gone lengthwise, so I went cross ways.

I used a nailer (hammer powered, not air) so maybe the floor just got put in too tightly as the distance went on, but most of the washboarding was in the end closest to where I finished.

Hope this helps,

Retireb