My Floor, In Pre-Floor Form
Posted on March 13, 2010 Posted by John Scalzi 38 Comments
Apparently, before you can lay down new flooring you have to let it acclimate to the house environment for 24 to 48 hours, so last night my new office floor arrived to get cozy and comfortable before it actually gets laid down. Yes, we believe in ethical treatment of flooring. As should you all.
Acclimate to the environment, this means taping bacon to it, right?
John:
You should take it out of the plastic bags since the idea is to let the “wood” (or whatever composite it is) cure by dehumidifying it at inside room temperatures. Good builders will do this for gypsum wallboards as well to prevent swelling that leads to nail pops. Given that it’s now spring and the humidity is high you may want to wait longer than 24-48 hours in order to dry that flooring to a reasonably consistent condition.
Caveat: I’m just someone who has built out a lot of basements as a homeowner, not a builder with real experience.
Good luck with your office improvements project.
Ray
Sure, you treat it nicely now, but later, you will walk all over it.
“Let’s talk about rust proofing. These babies will rust up on you just like that.”
“so last night my new office floor arrived to get cozy and comfortable before it actually gets laid down”
So why are you just stacking it down there like that? You should bring it upstairs, offer your new floor a drink, give it a hearty meal, and make it feel at home! Have your no sense of hospitality?
So you have to treat your floor like a new goldfish? Don’t forget to feed it, then.
We’ve slowly gone from mostly carpeting in our house to mostly wood over the last ten years. When we bought the house, only the kitchen was wood. Now, only the family room has carpet. We got very lucky in that the prior occupants had decided to carpet over the previously existing wood floors. (Though they used both glue and staples, which was annoying to deal with.)
The thing with wood floors is that you can always put a rug down, and rugs are a *lot* easier to clean than carpets.
We had the same situation on a slightly larger scale when we put hardwood flooring in our living room. The cat declared the stacked wood to be his fortress from on top of which he could survey his Empire
He was quite put out when the workmen showed up about a week later.
Listen to Ray, he knows of what he speaks.
It seems like stacking the floor on the floor is one of those things only an n-dimensional being with an ‘X’ in its name should be able to do.
I think I need to read something besides old-school SF for a while.
We did our living room with that exact same stuff. Looks great once it’s down. Do yourself a favor and get an extra bag of those little plastic spacers, a good rubber mallet, and some comfortable knee pads. Some blue painter’s tape works well to prevent damage to the veneer — it’s not perfect, I did have to throw out a few after hitting at a bad angle, but it saved some trouble.
John Murphy:
I’m having people lay the flooring for me. If I were to do it, the floor would end up in splinters. Which is not really what I want.
So as to not mar your beautiful floor with your office chair, you’ll want one of these bad boys:
http://www.glassmat.net/
Trust me when I say they are well worth the extra expense. Last one you’ll buy.
Banging on flooring with a rubber mallet is a very good way of venting frustration. Think back, have you ever seen a tense installer? Their supervisors, yes, but installers, not so much. Of course you do have the “Mallet of Loving Correction” to keep the installers on their toes… Don’t pack that baby away!
ah, pergo. proof the swiss love us and want us to be happy.
I’m always amused by the amount of unsolicited advice these posts get. If you posted about flossing, I’m sure you’d eventually have people telling you which floss to use, and how to do it “right”.
Josh, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you…
Bill
> before you can lay down new flooring you have to let it acclimate to the house environment for 24 to 48 hours
This just seems way too few hours (days). I sincerely hope you won’t regret it. Yes, your wooden flooring is kinda ready, but… It is not just me that has said that. And just watch what is underneath the flooring. Good luck anyway!
One should always be comfortable before one gets laid. Don’t we all know that??
Nice color!
The flooring expands and contracts throughout the year so the installers will need to leave a 1/4 gap along the walls. I only mention the gap to ask if you remembered to pick up some matching quarter round for them to lay too.
Good luck!
I’m having flashbacks of installing our dining room floor last year. Finished that project about 3 hours before family was showing up for Easter.
Looks JUST like the stuff–color and all–I was going to have put on my concrete, uneven basement floor–the salesman sold it to me, the delivery guy delivered it, a few days later the crew showed up and the crew chief was pretty much “No way this will work.”
Glad I wasn’t that salesman.
Ended up with vinyl tile. Also wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me that the floor *was* kinda lumpy….
@2: I believe you are supposed to keep the Pergo/composite containers unopened. And solid wood flooring needs longer.
Why did you decide to go with a composite instead of wood?
JimF:
Large dog with claws.
My wife and I did our kitchen with a laminate last year and it went fairly smoothly. Just remember that every home improvement project is a reason to buy a new tool (preferably power tools).
“Large dog with claws.”
Good choice, then; our Pergo has survived a dozen years of Chesepeake Cow Retriever (Chesepeake Bay Retriever X Border Collie, average weight around 95 lbs, pushing 110 in her dotage) abrasion with no visible loss of surface. There is the clattering racket of toenails on laminate flooring, but your office is not a throughway, unlike our open plan house.
As an alternative to the floor mat that pwstrain@13 recommended, you can also get polyurethane replacement wheels for the wheels on most standard office chairs. Did that to the 3 chairs in my home computer room after we put laminate flooring in, and have seen zero wear after 5 years.
Just make sure to be nice to the guys putting it down for you. That stuff is a pain to work with. Looks good when it’s done though.
Scott@29: Isn’t everybody nice to guys with nailguns? I know I am.
Laminate does not need to aclimate. Real wood, properly should be acclimated 3-4 days before installing so that it reaches an equilibrium humidification with the rest of the house.
John @ 24, Properly one pulls up the baseboards, lays the flooring, then reinstalls the baseboards.
No quarter-round required.
For our hose, I really like the color. I had loaded up my shopping cart with that color the other day at the Dome Despot, but was overruled by the spousal unit. (she liked the estate Oak).
From their website —
Acclimation—Allow unopened cartons of Pergo
planks to lay flat in the room where they will be
installed for 48-96 hours, depending upon climate,
before beginning installation. During this time, the
planks adjust to the specific temperature and
humidity conditions of the room.
I would have opened the packages and laid the planks out with stickers between, as if I was drying green lumber, and left them for a week. The things you can learn by simply reading the instructions. The packages must not be air-tight? In any case, longer than 96 hours would not hurt.
htom: The packages we had were not airtight.
Who was it who said “Men are like floorboards.* Lay them right the first time, and you can walk on them forever”?
___
*Actually the original said “floor tiles,” but I’m acclimating to the room here.
Folks:
You know, the guy who is supervising this has been doing his job for 30 years. I’m willing to believe he knows what he’s doing, regarding how long to keep the flooring in the house prior to laying it down.
@35: It’s like Hank Hill and the boys standing around drinking beer and giving free advice. XD
I’ll be Boomhauer:
The future is a floor looking up from under the heel of a boot.
Oh, good. I was wondering what to do about the flooring previously being in an environment where one end was rained on. Just 48 hours and all is forgiven, right?