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  • My "line" is bowed 1/4" in the middle

    Posted by wcurtispreston on October 2, 2022 at 8:04 pm

    Just a reminder that I had to lay the front room, then connect it to the back room on the left side of the photo before continuing on. Reminder that the wall in the living room is 2.5″ thicker than the wall in the back. Good times.

    Anyway, I have finished the living room and connected it to 3-4 rows in the back room. But when I was making sure they were square to the line, I noticed that the middle part is slightly off. meaning that the area in front and just around the stairs is 1/4″ closer to the line than the rest of the flooring. I’ve got the rest of the rooms to do, and they all feed off this main line, so this could be a big deal.

    Here’s a video explanation, along with an adorable granddaughter playing on the floor. :

    https://share.descript.com/view/JYLOp584PO0

    Choices:
    1. It’s no big deal. It’s only 1/4″. Ignore it.
    2. A bowed line like that is going to cause more problems as I lay out the rest of the house. I’ve got to fix it. I can see if I can make the whole line straight by moving the rows of planks in the family room closer to the line, and straighten out the whole line. This would, of course, cause the whole line to be slightly not square to that center line, but having a straight line is more important.
    3. This was caused by the first room being not quite square to the center line in the first place. (True) I need to rip and replace everything and make it square to begin with.

    • This discussion was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  wcurtispreston.
    Joe replied 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Members · 9 Replies
  • 9 Replies
  • wcurtispreston

    Member
    October 2, 2022 at 10:54 pm

    The reason it is like this is that I detected that the planks coming off from the living room were not square to the line that I created AFTER realizing the walls were not the same thickness. (The one that runs all the way from the front to the back of the house. I know I was supposed to create that first, but I did not. At the time I thought this was just one long wall, so what would be the difference where i made the line.) So the original line I worked off was a line created from the left/back wall of the living room only, which (as it turns out) was not completely square to the house as a hole.

    In my defense, the layout of the rooms would made it extremely hard to make one long line, then extend that long line into the middle of the living room without going askew. (The opening between the half wall and the stairs was only like 3′ wide.) Anyway…

    So the planks coming out of the living room are slightly askew/not parallel to the main line running down the middle. I initialy let them run the way they wanted to run, but then found that by the other end they were off by about a little over 1/2.” I adjusted the end by moving it over 1/2″ but the middle part didn’t move. (Everything there is already anchored to the LR.)

    That is what created this “bow” in the middle of about somewhere between 1/8″ and 1/4″. My current thinking is I should just let put the end of the planks back where they were, letting that line fall the way the planks want to run naturally (slightly askew), and not worry about the 1/2″ difference over a length of 40′. I followed your method, so I’ve got about 3″-wide planks on both ends. Each room where the planks run length-wise will only see 10-15′ of them, so they’ll only be a difference of about 1/4″ in each room.

    Thoughts?

  • Joe

    Administrator
    October 3, 2022 at 9:05 am
  • wcurtispreston

    Member
    October 3, 2022 at 9:50 am

    Thanks Joe. You referred to another video you recorded before this one, but I don’t see it. sounds like it’s pretty important.

  • Joe

    Administrator
    October 3, 2022 at 10:07 am

    Oops, yeah it was this one – https://somup.com/c36eIMU9Br

  • wcurtispreston

    Member
    October 3, 2022 at 10:20 am

    The string is “Hovering.” It’s being held just above the floor because it’s attached to two screens and it is taught. I will double check but I don’t think it’s being impeded by the tiles. BTW, while the planks do connect, I am seeing evidence in some of the the butt joints that the planks are being pulled unnaturally to one way. (A butt joint that is closed on one side, but slightly open on the other.)

    The core question is, which is more important:
    – being square to the wall

    – having the planks lay in a straight line

    I’m guessing it’s the latter.

  • Joe

    Administrator
    October 3, 2022 at 10:29 am

    Having the plank is more important then having it square to a wall

    • wcurtispreston

      Member
      October 3, 2022 at 8:07 pm

      I’m working on my own here, so I had to improvise. After taking off all of the placeholder scraps where the planks can move (after the stairs), I placed a string just above one of the cracks between the planks and taped one end of the string to a door plate, and the other end to a pile of two pieces of scrap. Kept it pretty tight. That allowed me to move the far end back and forth to see how it affected how the string lined up on the crack.

      https://vimeo.com/756611724/7a1a88842f

      It looks perfect now and I can rest easy. Not sure if you understand how great it is to be able to run stuff like this through you. I was feeling very uneasy, especially since the rest of the house has to come off this line. Now I feel great, and it’s all because I have you in my corner.

      #YouDaMan

  • wcurtispreston

    Member
    October 3, 2022 at 8:08 pm

    Never mind this post. It won’t let me delete it.

  • Joe

    Administrator
    October 4, 2022 at 5:43 am

    Sounds great my friend!!

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