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A room will work, or not work, only if the furniture and the surface areas agree.
Keep the conflict down, make peace, create a calm room.
Let’s start with floors. Remember, they are not the red-headed stepchild of your furniture and art, but the dominate background palate of the entire room.
THE CHECK LIST:
Floors must be flat.
Duh, you think…. but bumps where room additions were tacked on, or where slate meets wood creates truly life-threatening trip hazards. “One fall, that’s all.”
You say “of course” people know this…
But having perfectly flat floors throughout a large house takes foresight, precision, and care. Random tile guy does not care about random floor guy, and they just point fingers at each other,
Here is a massive $5M house, with a pinwheel room arrangement, where they all converge at a central tiled passage area.
See how each threshold had to have an interface bump? That is just JV. The tile guy, and the wood guy didn’t talk, and the supervisor was not there, so the grout under the tile was too low… go fish.
This bump will be here for 50 years.
This reveals the degree of care, the house was built.
Which will also show in the lack of care behind walls, in plumbing, & wiring.
The longer you live in such a house…the more of these failures and shortcuts you will discover, and the sooner you will sell it to someone else…
This is no ones “forever” house. It is a flip– now and forever after.
… don’t buy it.
OK…so how does a FRAMER, guarantee that the new addition is the same height as the old?
He pierces thru the walls of the old house, on the corner, to see the old hardwood floors. Then subtracts the thickness of the hardwood and any underlayment layers till his NEW frame is the same as the old frame.
Finally, he’ll, nail one 2×4 stud, as his master level point for the entire house.
AN 1/8T inch, a 1/16inch, MATTERS!!!!! Yet a good framer CAN do this well…(and ideally your old house is dead level the entire 40 to 100 feet what ever the house size is…!)
This is ONE observation, ONE moment, but it will determine the entire projects success or failure… How many of you have tripped over a non-level new addition to some creaky old house? Or worse, had to take a step up or down….. I have done some mighty ungracious face plants in some mighty glamorous houses…..freaky…embarrassing, and life threatening at a certain age…(look down, when entering a room… not up)
Stepless showers...
One of the trickiest place to have a flat floor is at the entrance to a shower…the stepless shower.
Google this, and you will see some clever ideas, but to achieve this, you MUST get your framer to buy into it…and hopefully have experience in creating this.
While it takes 30 seconds to nail down a 2×4 at the shower entrance and be done with it… it takes some deep back calculations to match the thickness of the grout and tile, to the thickness of the hard wood floors (tile is thinner than wood…) And the tile will be at an angle, for drainage…so this does take a minute. …it is not rocket science, but it DOES take a minute, and cooperative framer, floor guys, tiles guys and plumber to do this right.
As dogged as I am, even I was not fierce enough to win this battle, and must live with the step-in shower….I just had to pick my battles… could not will them all….but next time… !!!
Other short cuts
Wood HAS to go UNDER appliances and cabinets… Some guys are so lazy, they ask if they can stop at the counters edge..! NOOOOO
In the future, counters and refrigerator can be changed out, moved. Plus, you want a single floor height everywhere. It is just cleaner this way. It is an insult that they even ask you for this.
Also, while I am poking behind the refrigerator… make sure they put the base molding & shoe molding along the entire area back there too….Yes, where no one will see… IT matters…
Finally, each piercing of the floor with plumbing PEX tube, whatever, MUST be filled with foam, or some occlusion matter so bugs, air, sound do not pass thru these holes. This is soooo easily ignored and forgotten. If not fixed now, will stay this way for 30 years…”is that another roach?” !
Hardwood floor direction....
You want the light beams to be parallel to the direction your hardwood floors.
This is an invisible detail that an advanced house examiner likes to notice… If the floor are off, and you can’t put your finger on it.. look at the hardwood direction.
You want the light to be pulled into the house, not broken up….it looks distracting, becoming an ‘I can’t put your finger on it” problem…
A floor guy might be in a hurry, and start work and not ask you… He will install which ever direction is EASISEST fastest FOR him… then they will just ask forgiveness…. NOOOO…. (there is always an easy way, and a right way…)
Here is a $5M house, looks great.. but see how the floor is perpendicular to the light?
BUMMER… It takes 1 minute to make this decision, and once the floor guys begin… there is NO turning back, so a supervisor HAS to be in control of this… and not just trust the floor guy to make a good decision. YES it matters… everything matters. Just don’t let lazy be your design default. Use a checklist!
Same with floor tile. The new large 24”x24” tile often has a grain to it to… Picture yourself sweeping this floor… toward the doors or an edge…there is a common way to sweep, make sure you can sweep with the the grain of the tile, not scraping against the grain for 30 years…. really? Take a minute and think…Add this to your check list.