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Blueprint Request
Hi Joe!
Excited to get started with this project but very much looking for a gameplan, I’m torn on where to start
The product we’re installing is the Golden Arowana from Costco (made by Wellmade Floors) https://www.costco.com/golden-arowana-macchiato-waterproof-5mm-thick-wide-plank-hdpc-flooring-%2b-1mm-attached-pad-included.product.4000058746.html the T&G sides are uniclic but the ends are tap down, that said, they are very very tough, I tried like hell to break off a tongue and couldn’t but the price was right (2.30 a foot on sale)
They are wide planks 9.1″ wide and 48″ long
The flooring will be run throughout the space of the floorplan, currently the kitchen is a builder grade floating laminate (particle board) plank and the rest is carpet.
I’d like to flow the whole thing with no transitions if I can help it.
I failed to mark it, but for reference, as looking at the drawing, north is on the right (the 27′ wall that runs through the kitchen and living area)
the plan will be to do the living/kitchen and hall first and then the rest a bit later (but not too long and I’ll protect the edges with offcuts and ramboard in the interim so starter rows can be done into the bedrooms, it’s just going to be some item/furniture shuffling)
I initially was thinking of starting off the hall running the planks lengthwise parallel with the hall, but that would result in literally half the house being done backwards the other thought was running perpendicular to the hall starting in the living room which would leave just bathrooms and the guest room being backwards which seems better but I don’t know how bad that makes the transitions into all the rooms off the hall.
The entry and the stairs might look weird (east side), but this house is a bi-level so that 6.5×5 area is like 5 feet in elevation lower than the rest of the floor depicted in the floorplan and the stairs marked with the down arrow proceeds down to the basement another 5 or so feet lower than the entry, the wall on the right of the ‘up’ stairs (west wall of the living room) is a 4 foot pony wall that they did in leiu of a rail and probably to cut some of the noise going down to the basement.
I plan on doing hardwood caps on the stairs, so they won’t be planked, I’ll do a transition of some sort at the edge where the riser drops to the top step.
I can send pictures of any areas that I’m poorly describing or seem unclear or confusing.
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7 Replies
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Thanks Joe!
Thursday is absolutely no problem, I’ll attach pictured of the planks here, and will do detailed drawings of the bathrooms later
We’ve settled on an east-west plank orientation starting on the long north wall shared between the dining and living areas, I think ultimately that will end up being the easiest way to get through all those doorways
In the hall bath, we’ll likely be replacing the vanity at the same time as the flooring, the toilet is also getting replaced so I’ll just lay around the flange, the plank instructions say the toilet can sit on top, but I’m not concerned about cutting around things, I have track saw/jig saw/oscillating tool/rotozip with jamb saw attachment, etc.
That bath is also getting a bunch of other refresh work, glued up sheet mirror removal, gfci extended to toilet for bidet, etc so it’s going to be a fair bit of work
the current floors in the bathroom are sheet vinyl with slight faux grout line so I’ll be pulling that with a combination of heat gun and scraper because I think the level of effort of removing such a small area vs floating is close enough and there’s for sure some loose areas so I might get lucky with a poor adhesive laydown the first time, this house is only 17 years old so I’m not concerned about any sketchy materials in play. Worst case I can switch gears and level/feather but since I don’t anticipate having to do it anywhere else I’m going to do my best to avoid it.
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Sounds good Mike
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So I realized I was only caring for ‘floor’ area in the other drawing so I left out the tub/showers surrounds so this is the hall and master baths, they are mirror images so they could share a vent/plumbing but pretty simple and both will be running backwards (for the most part) but really easy to handle whether the vanities are there or not
I’m also considering the quiet walk lvp underpayment that I saw on your tools page since the currently carpeted space in the living room is above my office in the basement and the noise is already bad in the bedroom under the laminate in the dining room, does it work well for noise reduction? Or do you think it’s worth the ~ 40 cents a foot for it?
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Here is your blueprint and the link I mentioned in the video – https://somup.com/c0j6FVAhGM
video – https://youtu.be/4Gy_f0uPow8
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Hey Joe,
Just wanted to take a minute to update you on the progress so far. Also the blueprint highlighted that I had some scale issues on my drawing (like at the end of the hall, the guest bedroom and the master’s doors are actually directly across from each other, and I will clear the island before having to deal with the pony wall in the living room, I added a picture from the end of the island looking back to the east wall, nothing major though and it actually makes it easier.
So it turns out the layout works best starting with a full width plank on the long North wall, that makes every surface in the house that I have to go around perfect with two notable exceptions.
First is the island, where I have a 1.75″ piece that will under the overhang side of the island, so I might put some glue there just for insurance, but really not super concerned.
The second is the master bath doorway(when I get there) which I’m going to have to finagle a little working backwards into the doorway a couple of inches but given that that’s 2 small areas vs all the cabinets and walls everywhere else, I’ll take it. I did validate that the tubs will be great (like 4.5″ of plank)
I cheated a bit and didn’t use any string or chalk lines (even though I own both), I used marks on the wall (and some on the floor) and used a laser line level to project my lines so that I could do them on top of the underlay and in the places where demo wasn’t totally complete, you can see the mark on the patio door frame on a piece of tape and you can see where it lined up with row 8. I have marks on the sheetrock in the hall (what will be under the baseboards) so I can always recreate my reference lines for the bathroom/bedrooms when I get to those.
But are you can see from the island and cabinets, the house is more square than I was expecting and my planks are as close to perfectly parallel as possible.
I did a little excel magic to give me both feet and fractional inches as well as decimal inches all based on the metric size of the plank face (which is 232mm for mine), I did put together a few planks just to make sure my math mathed, but it made it much easier to have the decimal chart because it was nice to measure to something on the other side of the house and then divide the by 9.133858 to get the number of planks it gets to get to any given point and more importantly how much more than a full plank (greater than x.2 is good, less is bad) (yes, that’s my OCD showing)
Those bessey spacers were clutch, I did a full three rows before checking to the line, but honestly, I had it pretty well dialed in at row 1.
I also didn’t need to do any weird cutting in in front of the patio door, so that worked out nice for getting my first few rows, the first thing I hit was actually the floor vent on row 6
Now I am going to screw down some scraps lay some ram board down in front of the dishwasher to transition onto the new floor so I can yank the stove out onto the new floor and move the fridge out and to the left so I can finish out the kitchen and head down the hall just shy of the hall bathrooom.
I have an air bag shim that I think will work for lifting the dishwasher up enough to get planks under the legs.
Mostly I wanted to thank you for all the work you put into the blueprint and your videos in general and all the knowledge you’ve shared with the world, this is going so well for me because of your excellent tutelage and I’m extremely grateful to you for it.
Oh, and you were talking about the weather, we’re in Northen Kentucky (Cincinnati Metro area) where it’s been in the 90’s this week (97 is the forecast on Thursday), I’ll be really happy to see the 40’s in the morning again, but probably won’t for another month or two.
Mike
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Thanks for sharing this Mike, I love hearing about progress!!
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