Hallway Hardwood Flooring Install Progress (Plus A Few Installation Tips From A DIYer)
Note: If you’re not interested in flooring, please scroll down to the end of this post and read an important message from me!!
Yesterday, I got started on the installation of the hardwood flooring in the hallway, and I got about 2/3 of the way through. At one time, I had mentioned trying a herringbone pattern for the hallway, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want to introduce yet another pattern in this small area.
My hallway bathroom is bright and colorful, the hallway has striped walls, and as I showed you yesterday, I want the guest bedroom to be fun and colorful as well. And I have something really interesting planned for the home gym. So I wanted to keep the hallway floor calm.
Plus, every time I come across this older picture of the hallway and music room, I just love how the flooring is all continuous through this area…
So I decided to keep it simple and install the new flooring just like the original flooring. Here’s the progress I made…
Some parts of this installation were a little tricky for this DIYer (although they would have been a breeze for a pro), so I wanted to share with you how I handled some of the tricky areas.
I started the install in the cased opening between the music room and the hallway. The tricky part of this area was that the exposed edge of the original flooring board was the groove side, and in order to start the install right there, I needed that edge to be a tongue edge.
In order to change directions in the middle of a hardwood flooring install, they make these hardwood splines that can be inserted into the groove to act as a tongue. This allows you to put two groove edges together securely.
So I glued this spline right into the groove of the original floor board…
And then I was able to add the new board, going in the right direction, with the groove edge against that original board…
With the tongue now going in the right direction, I could proceed with installing the rest of the boards.
I had about 18 inches of flooring installation before I reached the next challenging area — the doorway into the bathroom. I decided to use two pieces of hardwood flooring going across the doorway as a transition, and then butt the hallway flooring right up next to those transition pieces…
The problem here is that I should have cut the tongue off of the board that went right next to the bathroom tile so that the groove edge was exposed. But I didn’t think to do that, and once that first board was wedged in there tightly, there was no getting it out.
So I ended up having to use my table saw to cut the the tongue off of the second board (i.e., the board that would butt up to the hallway floor boards). This gave me a smooth edge with neither a tongue nor a groove.
Now a professional in that situation probably would have taken the time to use his or her router to route a groove into that board. However, I am not a professional, and I didn’t have the appropriate router bit to cut a groove for hardwood flooring. So instead, I opted for wood glue. I simply made sure that I was putting a cut end right up against the cut edge (i.e., I didn’t leave the groove in the ends of the hallway floor boards, but I cut them off to give me a smooth end), and I added wood glue before installing those boards…
I feel confident that once that glue is dry, those boards will be securely in place against each other.
I got most of that flooring installed in that doorway before I hit the other doorway — the doorway between the hallway and the guest bedroom on the opposite wall.
This one was much easier. Because I’m not a pro and didn’t want to take a chance on lacing in the new boards with the old boards and making a real mess of things, I installed transition strips in this doorway as well. I used wood glue to install the first transition board up against the guest bedroom flooring. And on the second board, I left the tongue attached…
I was able to do leave that tongue attached because it was on the correct side for the grooves in the ends of the hallway boards to fit onto the tongue on the edge of the transition strip…
So those looked quite nice and fit together perfectly.
So the bottom line is that it just takes a little bit of thinking through which direction everything needs to go, which sides the tongues and grooves are on, and how everything is going to fit together. And as is always true when you’re a non-pro DIYer like me, you have to figure out how to improvise when we lack the skills and tools that the pros have. 😀 But even with my workarounds, I think this is going to look great once it’s sanded and finished.
A Special Note:
I got a comment on yesterday’s post from someone telling me how disappointed they were to come to my blog and see a political advertisement.
Y’all, I cannot stress this enough, so please hear me on this…
We bloggers do not choose the specific ads that appear on our blogs. An ad for a political candidate, product, or service, is not an endorsement from me.
Y’all know that my blog is a politics-free, current events-free zone. If there’s a tsunami in Asia, OF COURSE everyone is sad about it. Y’all don’t need commentary about it from me. The 2020 presidential race is just getting started, but y’all don’t need commentary from me about it.
So when it comes to ads, I have the ability to choose general categories of ads that appear or don’t appear on my blog. I can allow certain categories. I can exclude certain categories. I personally have chosen only family-friendly ads, and have chosen to exclude categories such as pharmaceutical drugs, gaming, dating, and yes…POLITICS.
But even though I have chosen to exclude those categories, sometimes those slimy little suckers will slip through the cracks. I don’t have any control over that, and again, those do not constitute an endorsement on my part, whether it’s the latest and greatest pharmaceutical drug that will cure your ailments, or whether it’s one of the 3,497 candidates running for POTUS.
If you see an ad on my blog that you find offensive or off-putting, feel free to tell me about it. But please understand that I can’t do anything about it if you just leave a general comment about how you’re offended because I had a political ad on my blog. I need to know details about the ad so that I can pass that detailed info along to the company that handles the ads on my blog. If they don’t have details, they can’t track down the ad and figure out how it slipped through the cracks.
Thanks for understanding. 🙂
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
I’m so sorry you got jammed with a political ad. I’ll be sure to let you know if I ever see one.
Sorry you had to deal with the political ad. You have been very circumspect in that regard and I really appreciate it. It’s nice to concentrate on decorating and DIY and share different opinions about colors and techniques instead of the other.
I don’t follow your blog for the ads . . . . I am only interested in your projects, your progress, your creativity, your unbelievable skills and abilities, etc!!
The floor looks awesome and you are making great progress on it.
I’m always impressed with your problem solving skills!! I read every post and know exactly where to come to when I have a house to start working on.
I am still amazed at how big your hallway is after taking space for the master bath! Such a lovely jewel of a space in your lovely home!
Thank you for the flooring tips. I’m installing nail down bamboo flooring now and LOVE the process. It is a total puzzle and very satisfying. I too have discovered the splines! I’m curious….I see you have a concrete subfloor. Are you gluing the wood to the subfloor or only gluing the tongue & grooves together? Heading to Waco this weekend to tour Baylor with my daughter!!!
I saw an ad on here about rugs and I’m pretty sure there’s a cover up going on!
Ha! I nearly spit out my coffee. Thanks for the laugh, Bev.
The floors look great!
LOL. Very clever! Humor is the best antidote for most things.
🤣 Bev, you are the best! Funny, I’ve learned to ignore the ads so well I don’t even see them anymore!
Lol, that is the best! I needed that this morning.
It’s looking great! Those splines are the one thing I wish they would figure out a similar trick for with floating laminate flooring. Sometimes, you just need to be able to change directions and with laminate, you don’t really have the option to glue the piece down (defeats the purpose of “floating” flooring).
I find it amusing what people will get so bothered by. There are annoying flashing ads when I read the blog and I couldn’t tell you what they are even for, because I IGNORE them😏!
Agree!
Does the old floor have to be restained when you add new floor right up to the old floor? Or is it easy to match them?
Kristi as always I looked forward to your blog every day. As for the ads, who cares? It’s just so easy to scroll on by. Just a little swipe up. Some ads that pop up have really nice pics and I enjoy looking at them and get inspiration. I read your blog because I am very interested in what YOU do. Just like tv, ads are revenue for service providers.
KEEP ON BLOGGING!!!
Am I the only reader of your blog (or blogs in general) that doesn’t even look at the ads? I literally only see the content that you post and scroll past everything else. I know you need ads for revenue, but I don’t need to see them so I scroll right on past. Literally, I don’t know a single ad that’s ever been on your page. Of course today, since you pointed out the ads, I did see some because I was looking. And now I’m hungry…thanks Chick-fil-A ad. 😉 Some people just will get their panties in a wad over literally ANYTHING.
No! I’m with you! I’ve never paid any attention to ads, and truthfully, I didn’t even realize there were ads on here! I just look at the amazing work that Kristi does and ignore everything else I guess! Unbelievable that someone would get that twisted over an ad that’s out of her control! Guess I need to go back to see what the uproar was about!😂
Or they could do the adult thing and ignore the ads instead of complain to you. Scroll down or close the ad. End of story. Geez.
Amen. Life is too short to get your knickers in a knot about everything. Take a breath, relax.
Agree~!
Your floor looks amazing. We share the same common project right now. I am removing an old plug style hardwood floor (10 X 23′ of it) and replacing that with new nail down hardwood (minus the old fashioned plugs). This is a challenging project, but with time and patience everything will be brand new.
Keep up the hard work, crawling around on your hands is knees for hours on end is not easy. Plus, the worst is when a tool you need is on the other side of the room.
Ads are everywhere on the internet, not just here, so deal with them folks! Now for the flooring, it’s looking good and I’m not at all surprised you are able to figure out the problems along the way. I’m also going to remind you of your C.O.P. for this week, so you don’t feel bad at the end of the week! LOL! It’s hump day, so you still have time!
I can honestly say that I have never noticed ANY ads on your page. I am probably in the minority but my brain only focuses on your words/videos/pics and never looks to the right.
I just went back through the whole blog and don’t see ANY ads! Maybe because I have ad-block plus on my tablet, phone, computer etc! Not sure, but there’s NO ads on mine! I’m almost disappointed 😂🤣😂🤣Keep on keeping on Kristi and I’m sorry you have to deal with that!
Kristi, I am amazed by your talents and tenacity! So grateful for all the tips for a new diyer, thank you so much.
I use Adblock Plus (free) so I never see ANY ads period. Rather than complain to Kristi, get yourself an adblocker and solve the problem once and for all sites! It really makes a difference in enjoying the internet.
What a great job you are doing, bravo, bravo!!!! Concerning political ads, it doesn’t bother me one bit. I wish people would quit being so d&%$ sensitive, sheesh, give me a break! I just hope you had the right candidate on here, haha!
I liked seeing the old picture of the music room and hallway! I’ve been with you since the condo days but even though I’m not new I somehow thought the bathroom was oriented differently. I thought it was directly across from the opening to the music room. I’ve seen all the floor plans you’ve shared and pictures and still had it wrong. It was funny to me, I was like “wait, where is the bathroom?” It was disorienting…then I started laughing again that I thought it was disorienting to not know the layout of a house I’VE NEVER BEEN IN. Anyway, not so funny explaining it here…but I appreciated the dose of ridiculousness I gave myself anyhow. 🙂
I’m so sorry you have to deal with the ad thing. Good for your pocketbook, but too bad you have to listen to complaints. They should do as I do and ignore everything except YOUR CONTENT. duh! it’s not that hard. LOVE all your floors btw. So impressed with all you can do.