install4you
Active Member
Greetings to All.
I’ve got an “OH NO” situation & need a quick solution if anyone’s willing to educate me.
Seventeen years ago, I decided to install prefinished, all-the-same-length, nail down bamboo flooring in my home. I researched, asked around, bought a flooring stapler, & got started. I started each row with random cuts rather than just alternate end joints at the center of each adjacent board. The budget and time allowed doing LR, DR, Den, & hall, leaving 3 bedrooms. Family was happy with result, so I was happy too.
Now I'm starting bedroom 3, the last room in the house. I'm continuing bamboo into the bedroom & not sure how to proceed. Picture 1 shows how I ended a hall at the door. The arrow in pic 1 indicates the first row I ever put down. Pictures 2 & 3 show the same place from the bedroom side. I measured carefully, cut the hall boards to end together, fine tuned the ends with a sharp chisel, ripped the tongue off a terminating piece, & then just had to fix the carpet. I didn’t know if I’d ever put bamboo in the bedroom, so what I did made sense at the time. If I had it to do over, I’d have removed the small section of carpet (gone now) in the bedroom & continued the bamboo to the wall. If I ever put bamboo in the bedroom, my plan was to remove & replace the boards that stopped at the door & continue to the wall.
I had started this project with the bedroom you don’t see in Pic 1, behind me & on the right. Just as I was finishing that room, I saw the light from the window bouncing off the floor, causing a few scattered planks to light up like neon signs. Only then did I realize that the new batch of bamboo had a different sheen from the old batch. Of course, I had mixed several boxes & that included the last few pieces of the old flooring, scattered around the room, glaring at me with their higher gloss finish. This room was to have an area rug that would cover those pieces, so after I cried a bit, I went on.
Now I realized I didn’t have any more of the sheen that matched the hall. If I intermixed the new with the old at the end of the hall it would look awful and be seen all the time. Additionally, if I was going to remove & replace boards that stopped at the bedroom door, that room needed to be next for the sake of continuing into the MBR (on the left in pic 1). Circumstances required that the MBR was next, & since I had no matching boards, I just decided I wouldn’t replace the partial boards at the end of the hall.
Now I don’t know how to proceed. Do I remove the perpendicular piece in the doorway & try to line up new boards just butted up against the hall boards (or rout a groove across the ends of the boards in place)? Do I leave the perpendicular board (with groove) & butt up to it? If I insert the tongue into the perpendicular board, every board will end up the same length when I cut them at the wall. Otherwise, I’d have to cut random lengths & rout new grooves on the cut ends. Or do I need to try to cut a new tongue on the ends of boards so I can randomize lengths? No matter what I do, unless I’m able to cut some new grooves &/or tongues, I’ll have to butt ends together. Then I’d have to top-nail across the doorway.
I have a pretty good morticing jig I made for my table saw if I need to cut some tongues or grooves. If I want to groove the cut ends of the hall boards in place, I have a router with slotting bits, but I’d have to do some of it manually when the router bumped the trim on either end.
I hope someone can tell me the best options for this problem. I want this to look good for everyone else, but especially because I’ll be looking at it every time I walk down the hall to the MBR.
The real kicker is that I found enough of the old sheen boards (misplaced in the garage) that I could have removed the cut pieces & continued into the room as I should have in the first place. However I connect to the existing hall, I'll use these boards in the small area in the room at the end of the hall.
Thanks for any ideas,
Eddie
I’ve got an “OH NO” situation & need a quick solution if anyone’s willing to educate me.
Seventeen years ago, I decided to install prefinished, all-the-same-length, nail down bamboo flooring in my home. I researched, asked around, bought a flooring stapler, & got started. I started each row with random cuts rather than just alternate end joints at the center of each adjacent board. The budget and time allowed doing LR, DR, Den, & hall, leaving 3 bedrooms. Family was happy with result, so I was happy too.
Now I'm starting bedroom 3, the last room in the house. I'm continuing bamboo into the bedroom & not sure how to proceed. Picture 1 shows how I ended a hall at the door. The arrow in pic 1 indicates the first row I ever put down. Pictures 2 & 3 show the same place from the bedroom side. I measured carefully, cut the hall boards to end together, fine tuned the ends with a sharp chisel, ripped the tongue off a terminating piece, & then just had to fix the carpet. I didn’t know if I’d ever put bamboo in the bedroom, so what I did made sense at the time. If I had it to do over, I’d have removed the small section of carpet (gone now) in the bedroom & continued the bamboo to the wall. If I ever put bamboo in the bedroom, my plan was to remove & replace the boards that stopped at the door & continue to the wall.
I had started this project with the bedroom you don’t see in Pic 1, behind me & on the right. Just as I was finishing that room, I saw the light from the window bouncing off the floor, causing a few scattered planks to light up like neon signs. Only then did I realize that the new batch of bamboo had a different sheen from the old batch. Of course, I had mixed several boxes & that included the last few pieces of the old flooring, scattered around the room, glaring at me with their higher gloss finish. This room was to have an area rug that would cover those pieces, so after I cried a bit, I went on.
Now I realized I didn’t have any more of the sheen that matched the hall. If I intermixed the new with the old at the end of the hall it would look awful and be seen all the time. Additionally, if I was going to remove & replace boards that stopped at the bedroom door, that room needed to be next for the sake of continuing into the MBR (on the left in pic 1). Circumstances required that the MBR was next, & since I had no matching boards, I just decided I wouldn’t replace the partial boards at the end of the hall.
Now I don’t know how to proceed. Do I remove the perpendicular piece in the doorway & try to line up new boards just butted up against the hall boards (or rout a groove across the ends of the boards in place)? Do I leave the perpendicular board (with groove) & butt up to it? If I insert the tongue into the perpendicular board, every board will end up the same length when I cut them at the wall. Otherwise, I’d have to cut random lengths & rout new grooves on the cut ends. Or do I need to try to cut a new tongue on the ends of boards so I can randomize lengths? No matter what I do, unless I’m able to cut some new grooves &/or tongues, I’ll have to butt ends together. Then I’d have to top-nail across the doorway.
I have a pretty good morticing jig I made for my table saw if I need to cut some tongues or grooves. If I want to groove the cut ends of the hall boards in place, I have a router with slotting bits, but I’d have to do some of it manually when the router bumped the trim on either end.
I hope someone can tell me the best options for this problem. I want this to look good for everyone else, but especially because I’ll be looking at it every time I walk down the hall to the MBR.
The real kicker is that I found enough of the old sheen boards (misplaced in the garage) that I could have removed the cut pieces & continued into the room as I should have in the first place. However I connect to the existing hall, I'll use these boards in the small area in the room at the end of the hall.
Thanks for any ideas,
Eddie
