Bad Hardwood Installation Can't Get Worse

Here's an example of a premium custom hand scraped floor we sold to a local customer in 2007. The location was a high end clubhouse in a golf course development in Fort Myers, Bad Hardwood Installation Florida. Considering our business was close to the job I wanted some nice pictures to show off the floor on the website. Prior to the sale the customer claimed they had installers lined up for the job, but what kind of installers I wondered? Or better yet did the installers know what they were doing?

Pictures Tell a Thousand Words!

This is a classic example of somebody trying to save a few bucks in what is a highly visible country club setting. Sorry folks I will not get into details of the builder name or exact location because it makes me sick just thinking about it. May I be blunt? Real skilled idiots the way I look at it. The moment I walked in the door without looking at the newly installed area red flags were waving.

Not only did they fail to use the proper amount of adhesive required to glue down hardwood floors, but the method in which the floor was started was wrong. Needless to say I did not want to stay around long. After all, the people that bought the flooring said they had installers lined up for the job.

And It Gets Worse!

I would hazard a guess even the most uneducated consumer can figure out what's wrong in the picture below. Give up? These skilled idiots were too lazy to handle this job in any No staggered end joints way remotely proper. Hardwood flooring should be installed with each plank being staggered from one another and not lined up where the end joints meet up with each other! They should also be installed in rows, not columns!

Let's look at a few other aspects of this classic hack job. Not only does the photo on the right show a large area of light colored boards that have been installed, but it is approaching a stairwell that steps down. Whenever hardwood runs off a stairway it is installed starting at the stair nosing made for the floor. The stair nosing is affixed to the subfloor then hardwood is installed against it, providing a tight and seamless fit.

I have no clue how these guys worked this one out. I would guess they ran the flooring over the first step down, chopped it off with a circular saw and installed the nosing somehow.

A few other items if some of you do it yourselfers should run into a similar situation. In the first picture the floor was installed around the column, but these yahoos left out some smaller pieces that have to be cut to fit. I noticed how they handled this situation, but it was a joke. A piece was cut and I noticed one guy was trying to pound it into place with a rubber mallet. These floors are tongue and groove on all sides. It's not going to fit buddy! He did realize the problem, then separated a few boards, while getting glue everywhere, finally getting it into place.

Proper Method

Chances are you may hear differing views on how to stagger. Instead of mentioning a Racked floor, staggered boards distance one end joint has in relation to another in the next row or adjoining rows, try to use as much space as possible. It will be much harder if you're working with material consisting of many short pieces, but keep an eye on where they are being placed even if you're four or five rows away from the first one.

For nailed type floors staggering is accomplished when laying out the area or as professionals call racking. This not only allows for proper placement of end joints but gives one an idea of any color variations, or clumps of light and dark colored boards that may become too obvious.

Related Pages:

• Avoid Hardwood Floor Problems - Before they start
• Racking Hardwood Floors
• Buckled Floors Over Crawl Space
• The Forty Year "Expert"