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Post by daylilydude on Jun 2, 2016 6:34:53 GMT -5
2 Questions:
1- If you lay this would you lay the grain with the width or length of the room?
2- In our living room we have reddish dark stained pine walls from the 60's, would you go with a dark wood floor or would you go with a lighter color to brighten up the room... there is NO way of matching the color of those walls within our budget.
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Post by paulf on Jun 2, 2016 8:09:05 GMT -5
When we put down laminate flooring we did a hallway and two bedrooms. The hallway was laid down lengthwise and continued that pattern into the bedrooms so that one room was widthwise and the other lengthwise.
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Post by meandtk on Jun 2, 2016 15:55:01 GMT -5
I think the orientatien is your choice. If, as paulf mentioned, there is a hall, that should be considered. I. Like the idea of a lighter room. I put dark flooring in a dark room, and cannot get enough light.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 2, 2016 21:54:41 GMT -5
I put some prego down in my livingroom recently (a winter time project!). I put it down with the grain going the short way, but only because it was the easy way - I laid it parallel to the steps, and worked from there. One thing you may find, esp. in an old house like mine, is that you will get uneven-ness (is that a word? : in the corners, and once you get to the end , and having a woodworking shop is a major advantage here. If you do have a stairway, like mine, that sticks into the room, that's where you have to start, butting the wood flat against the step, otherwise the wood will not be parallel to the step, and it will be noticeable. Once you get to the sides it's not as noticeable. Another place the wood may look crooked, if not parallel, is at a doorway, so you'll have to look and see if there are any of these that you will have to start from, or which is most noticeable. Another thing I ran into that I had to do some major woodworking was a fireplace hearth. The space between the wood and the tiles was about 3/8" less on one side, to I had to cut some tapered pieces on my table saw, using a taper jig, then made a frame to go around it out of hardwood, and stained it dark. This way, the tapered pieces next to the frame aren't as noticeable, as your eyes go the frame and the tiles, while if they were butted right up to it, it would definitely have been noticeable. That uneven space between the wood and tiles: Corrected with the frame, with the tile grouted: Another place I was lucky to have my workshop was around the radiators. That profile thing I use for my lathe copied the shape I needed to cut on the pieces, and the bandsaw cut them with no problem. Something I noticed when I first started cutting the wood to length using the sliding miter saw (set at a very slight angle, since the room was not square!) was that sparks were coming off of the sawblade. So be careful - I made sure that I vacuumed up the sawdust as it accumulated, and didn't use my dust collection system, as I thought that something might catch in there. I also used a cheap carbide blade, rather than one of my good ones, figuring that this was doing some damage! The bandsaw blade was dulled, and I tossed that after the project. One good thing about this stuff - I put a piece of scrap out on my deck, and it has been rained on countless times, with very little damage! This put my mind to rest about what I may have to do if I spilled something on it, like get a wet dry vac, and suck up every bit of liquid possible, to avoid damage!
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Post by daylilydude on Jun 3, 2016 5:32:55 GMT -5
That looks great pepperhead212! Our kitchen is narrow, I'm wondering which way of running it would make it look bigger?
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 8, 2016 10:43:07 GMT -5
Orientation is a matter of taste. But, usually with a small room you want to run the grain along the larger dimension of the room to make it look bigger. Another advantage of running with the larger dimension of the room is that it usually reduces the number of board cuts you have to make. But as others have said, if you are doing multiple rooms, you need to consider how the orientation will look in those rooms. You also have to consider obstructions (like steps, doorways, islands/peninsulas, fireplaces, etc.) and crooked areas. You can always try laying down a few courses to see (not cutting any boards, just laying some straight out of the box onto the floor) to see which way you like it best and visualize how you will work around obstructions and crooked areas. As to the color, there's nothing like getting samples and bringing them home to look at everywhere they will be installed - in both day and night lighting. They will look different in your home under your lighting than they will in the store. In general, I see the appeal of light floors to brighten up a dark hallway, BUT it's not only a matter of light vs. dark, but also how the colors look together. I know you can't match the paneling, but whether you go light or dark, you should be able to find a color that will complement that reddish paneling, not clash with it. You don't want to spend this kind of money and then hate the color you picked. Speaking of the paneling, I don't know whether the paneling is still there because you like it, or because you can't afford to replace it. So I am going to throw out some other fairly inexpensive options to consider for brightening that hallway: (1) Paint the paneling a light color. (2) Upgrade the light fixture(s) in your hallway. (3) This is a lot more work, but you might be able to strip and sand the paneling, then re-stain it a lighter color. And you could pick that color to coordinate with whichever flooring you like for the kitchen. But that won't work unless the paneling is solid wood, not a veneer, and is thick enough to hold up to the sanding. (I've been watching way too many home remodeling shows lately - can you tell? )
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Post by daylilydude on Jun 8, 2016 18:04:48 GMT -5
Oh if it was just paneling we would just cover it with new paneling, but it's solid pine planks and yep it would be out of our budget to sand and restain, so we are going to try and match the grain of it just in a lighter color for the floor. We have decided to run it long ways with the room because it will be running into our living room floor just to make it look all together if that makes sense??
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