Measure carefully to ensure clean, professional-looking edges to your hardwood flooring installation.
Hardwood flooring is installed starting along one edge of the floor and working over to the oppose edge in courses. Within that simple concept are a few complexities. You don't want to end up with a sliver of a board for the last course, so you have to split the difference between the first and last courses. Also, older rooms usually aren't square, but the flooring layout has to be. You also have to leave a space between the edges of the floor and the walls for floor expansion (trim covers the spaces).
Instructions
1. Measure ½ inch out from the wall at one end of the floor where you want to start the flooring courses, generally the longest edge of the floor. Make a second mark ½ inch out from the wall at the other end of the same edge of the floor.
2. Hold one end of your chalk snapline on one of the marks, and have your assistant hold the other end on the other mark. Stretch the string tightly. Lift the string in the middle, with the two ends still pulled tightly across the floor, and let it snap back down, leaving a chalk line ½ inch out from the starting point.
3. Repeat the process on the other side of the room so you have two lines, each ½ inch from the starting and ending walls.
4. Measure the distance between the two lines at one end of the room, then at the other. If they aren't the same distance at the ends, re-snap the lines in adjusted positions so that they are. Make the adjustments to both the narrow and wide sides, moving the positions as little as possible. For example, if the lines are ½ inch closer to each other at one end than the other, move both lines 1/8 inch back at the narrow end, and 1/8 inch forward at the wide end.
5. Set a row of floorboards loosely across the floor, side by side along their width sides, from the starting line to the ending line. Tuck the tongue-and-groove edges together. Measure the extra space between the last board and the ending line. This is the gap that would be left if you started the first course with a full board.
6. Calculate the necessary width of the starting and ending courses by adding the extra space at the end to the width of a full floorboard, then dividing by two. So if your boards are 4 inches wide, and there was 2-inch of space left at that the end, that means your starting and ending courses should cut to 3 inches wide (4 plus 2 is 6, divided by 2 is 3). When you lay the floor, you'll length-cut the boards of the first and last courses to that width.
