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  • How flat is good enough and how to handle a floor inflection?

    Posted by Robert on September 27, 2021 at 9:19 pm

    Joe, what an amazing site you’ve created. You are a wonderful instructor.

    1. The SuperCore Vinyl plank has 3/16 over 10′ and 1/32 over 12″ tolerances. We’ve used self leveling underlayment so far. We will try to get the little dips out using your suggestion of Ardex Feather Finish. But perfection will still not be achieved. At what point is good enough?

    2. The Kitchen has a weird inflection in the middle (see pic). The floor is flat from the inflection point out to the walls. The inflection point is about about 5/8″ to 1″ higher than walls where there are doors so self leveling doesn’t work. Supplier told us to use heat guns to heat the material to get it to mold to the floor. How would you handle this?

    3. We plan to start in the bedroom closet unless it makes more sense to have transitions into Kitchen and/or Bath 1 (then we will start in Bath 2). I worry about stress at the kitchen door if there is no transition there. Specs suggest we are okay to 50 ft, but connected via a 30″ doorway seems risky to me. If we turn the kitchen layout the opposite direction of the hallway (thus running perpendicular to countertops and hall) will that work better?

    Robert replied 2 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • Joe

    Administrator
    September 28, 2021 at 9:06 am
  • Robert

    Member
    September 28, 2021 at 11:21 am

    Thanks a million, Joe, for your wealth of experience and ability to teach!

    I plan to run planks east and west per your hallway centered approach. Planks install left to right. I plan to start in south east corner of bedroom closet. (Probably should have flipped picture 180 degrees).

    The west (left) side and east side of kitchen are very flat, but both sides rise to the middle inflection. Seems built into 60 year old foundation. Doors are at both west and east ends of kitchen so building up floor to match middle would create about 1″ step up into kitchen at each end.

    I think, per your suggestion, maybe the compromise is to run planks in kitchen north and south (while rest of house goes east and west). Prep by sanding high spot — round it out more — then glue those planks to each other to avoid a transition in the middle of the kitchen.

    What do you think?

  • Joe

    Administrator
    September 28, 2021 at 2:09 pm
  • Robert

    Member
    September 28, 2021 at 3:40 pm

    Thanks Joe. Hope the picture helps.

  • Joe

    Administrator
    September 29, 2021 at 10:40 am
  • Robert

    Member
    September 29, 2021 at 12:43 pm

    Joe, your answer exceeded my imagination. The idea of running the whole floor north and south never occurred to me. As I write this, my assistant is sanding the kitchen door area to see if we can make that happen. Thank you so much. I think we can now move forward. Your answers exceed our expectations and I could not be happier with your services. Your ability to understand the problem and then articulate the answer is wonderful. I’ll post pictures of our finished project. Thank you!

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