Methinks you are looking at a tree and forgetting the forest here,Garret.

To design an entire install around a particular trim piece is a wrong headed way to go about this. What if the stair opening is a little out of square?? Bend the whole job for the sake of a 3 foot section?

Certainly you have read enough to know that you are going to need some tools for this project. I would plan on needing a router and a slot cutter at least. I will mail you a slot cutter if you promise to send it back.

The stairnose dilema is hardly a dilema. You have several boards between the field and the stairnose that you can adjust with a table saw. You then cut a new slot in the back of each board you rip. It only takes a few minutes.

On the question of doing the math and measuring according to board width, no can do. If the product is out of tolerance,there is no constant from which to make an equation. A better way would be to dry-smack a bunch of boards together and see what they measure collectively. Keep in mind that this is not likely to give you an accurate dimension to use as a constant.

The real measure is when the stuff has been mechanically fastened to the floor. I suppose you could take a dial guage and get a presice width of the plank,but any minute error will be repeated over and over until you reach the finish line. Easier to say"screwit" and just make adjustments as you approach that edge.

p.s. Wipe on poly is what I use. I also carry a collection of stains and stain markers for fine tuning my modifications to prefinished floors. I make a dam'n nice pre-finished T-mould with my table saw. hoho

You could also purchase the one sided reducers BR111 makes for that purpose at the carpeted area. Everybody will have different methods but personally I'd start the whole job off the stairnosing making sure it's square with the rest the the layout and dosen't move around when the first few rows are nailed.



Yupper!

garrett how do you do those drawings? special program? what is your secret. we have ways of making you talk.

Hi William,

I like to use Microsoft Excel as electronic graph paper. I set my rows and column sizes to be the same, so that every cell is a square, and I pick a scale, say one cell is one square inch. The rest is done just by highlighting ranges of cells and applying cell colors and borders. It's quite quick compared to trying to do it in a CAD program, especially if you don't need high precision.

The biggest drawback is that it is only really useful for layouts with mostly straight lines and right angles. Lots of curves or odd angles would be tough.

- Garrett in San Diego

thank you very much