After almost three years and an unexpected interruption (kitchen and dining renovation) I have almost finished installing a little over 1000 sq. ft. of Patagonian Rosewood in my upstairs. Only thing left is the hallway and stairs, which I'm trying to finish up before the baby comes in about three weeks (hopefully not sooner).

I'm hoping some of you fine gentlemen can help me out. I was planning on installing the flooring in the hallway first until I measured the distance from the stair header to the opposite wall. I have enclosed a rather feeble drawing to illustrate. The hall is 10' long an flooring will go parallel (about) with longest wall. The blue rectangle is the upmost stair tread/landing.

The width of the stairs is 36" and there is a 7/16th inch difference between distance "A" and distance "B" in the photo.

I am uncertain how to lay this out, as that difference will clearly increase as the line travels down the hall.

I've been unable to find an acceptable remedy through my search methods. Please help.

Is your flooring pre-finished? You can use a block plane to shave off a little of the groove side of several boards to make a slight taper in the rows to get the alignment that you need. Since there is a small bevel in almost all pre-finished, you may be able to take a little off several rows of planks to get where the flooring is parallel to the steps. It would be easier if you were going to sand the floor after installation and didn't have to deal with the micro-bevel, but if you have space across the room it will work out. The tongue doesn't fill all of the groove, so you can take at least a sixteenth of an inch off the groove side without affecting how the boards fit together, if you make the taper gradual.

Tweak/turn the stair nosing so it's square with A & B. But it sounds like that area has been installed already?

What is the flooring in the adjoining rooms that are off the hall? Also, what are the thresholds in the doorways?

I have installed the same flooring in every other room. I have decided to use t-molding as thresholds for the following reasons:
1) With small children, if I need to refinish only one room, I can do that one without having to refinish all of the to keep continuity
2) The joists run two different directions and I didn't want to add extra height to the floor (by reinforcing it) so, in the room where the joists change direction I ran the boards diagonally (which looks pretty slick anyway).


My concern with that is 1) the bullnose overhanging the step by 7/16 more on one side than the other 2) having a board extremely tapered in the center


It has not. I plan to begin the stairs this week, working from the bottom up.


Yes.


I really like the concept of that idea. I suppose this could most easily be done to the boards on the upper tread/landing area (within the blue rectangle) so that by the time they reach the blue line nearest the hall wall, they would be parallel to that line. My concerns would be 1) eliminating the micro-bevel, giving it an unfinished look 2) block planing the boards to a slight, straight taper by hand. I don't see that working well and looking professional. My friend has a planer; would that be useful? Can you use one to plane at an angle?

Come to think of it, not every threshold will have a t-molding. The right-most door at the end of the hall before it turns, that opens up into the right as you look at the drawing, is a bathroom that will have vinyl flooring and will therefore use a reducer. The reducer is grooved for tongues to fit into, therefore the more out-of-square the perpendicular boards adjoining this seam are, the more stair-step effect the gaps will have between the board ends and the reducer. Unless I did the reducer slightly out of square (with the doorway) across the doorway to make the reducer square with the floorboards.

Also, the door just to the right of the tread/landing (blue rectangle) which opens up toward the bottom of the drawing is a very small (approximately 2.5x2.5) hall closet. The closet will have no threshold.

Upon thinking more about it, I suppose there are many dimensions that are of concern.
Maintaining Parallel between "A" and "B". (Most Important?)
Compensating between "C" and "D". (Tied for 2nd Most Important?)
Maintaining right angle where the boards will meet the threshold, or "E". (Tied for 2nd?)
Finally, compensating between "I" and "H". (3rd Important?)
Compensating between "G" and "F". (Least important?)
Oi, Vei!

So many decisions being a floorlayer! If you like the color you may never sand the floor, if you re-coat it before you wear through the finish.
You can tweak the steps to make parallel to the floor.
The rest will depend on what you think will be most important with the traffic pattern and how you proceed.