Wooden floors in unsymmetrical rooms

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mainie

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This probably sounds like an odd question but the house we are buying is a corner terraced house and fan shaped so the sitting room will not be rectangular in shape. It will be wider at one end than the other. My boyfriend thinks that this will mean a wooden floor would look wrong because you have to follow a line when laying it but I don't see how it would matter. Does anyone have experience in unsymmetrical houses? :) Or laying floors? Would it look strange?
 
I would say that a good floor layer should be able to overcome this as all rooms are never truely square, ok you may have a curved wall ect but like I said a good floor layer will have probably done this many times before and should be able to make it look as well as possible.


Carpenter is your man here he would know for sure.

Good Luck ;)
 
No reason why this would look odd. Just use the longest or most dominant wall and work from that.
 
Has anyone tried flooring a room with wood diagonally? We were thinking this might look good given the shape of the house and also make it easier to line up the hallway floor with the living/dining area. Either that or v-shaped as in, two pieces of wood liad diagonally and meeting in the centre. Anyone tried this?
 
Hey mainie, where is your house?? we originally looked at a very similar new house in Lucan but gave up on it because of the room shapes!
 
Its in Maynooth - Griffin Rath Hall. Not seeing it as such a disadvantage anymore, just tryng to find the best way to lay the floors now. Have a few ideas but trying to decide on the best one. There's not many people with fan shaped houses! :)
 
Hi Mainie,

Our last house was a fan-shaped house. We had wooden floors upstairs and downstairs - semi-solid upstairs and laminate downstairs. We paid to get them fitted due to the irregular shape but there were no problems with the fitting. As a previous poster suggested, the fitter started at the straight wall (an internal wall) and worked towards the external wall. At the external wall there was a very narrow slither of flooring but it was extremely well done. We were delighted with it.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend the fitter as he has since passed away but we got the recommendation from Doors and Floors where we bought the floors.

Hope this helps, Triona
 
Hi Mainie
Sounds like an interesting house. When laying a wooden floor the run can be used to alter the visual space of the room. For example a long narrow room can be made to appear a bit deeper by installing the runs perpendicular to its length. Is your area curved at one end with the straight walls meeting at an apex,as in a triangle? Your description of fan shape. Then it would be easier to install the runs at 90 deg. to one of the straight walls. The cuts to accomodate the curved section would be easier which translates to less labour costs. Most importantly the end product would look very good. I've done this with rectangular rooms which are curved at the end and I was pleased with the result. Having said thatt the the decor of the house suited the assymetry of the floor runs. The visual run of the wood would accentuate the unusual shape of the room without making it look to busy. I like your idea of 45 deg runs down the middle. I've done this with decking but never a floor. There are some nice design possibilities. As regards aligning the floor runs for this room into the hallway. Why do this. Maybe not doing so and maintaining an assymetry between the rooms can create an artistic feature of it?
As dobber22 says it would be interesting to see carpenter's idea, it's always good to learn from a fellow tradesman who knows what he's talking about.
I hope my post is clear as it can be difficult to describe something without referral to a floor-plan.
 
Hi Mainie
I was seeing something totally different in my own mind. What I would do is run the flooring 90 deg. to the hall wall. This would visually widen the area. Also I would use a wide board to give more symmetry to the rooms.
Just a thought but why cut the kitchen. If you floor the whole kitchen up to the same line as the hall wall you make it look bigger and more homogenous. If you use your circle you will essencially make it appear smaller and disjointed. I understand you want to create a sense of flow between the rooms. You can still use different flooring. But by bringing some of the accents, or colors, from the living room into the kitchen you can still create a sense of flow or balance. Hope this helps.
 
Thanks for the advice. Sounds good! Yeah, I agree its probably better to floor the kitchen to the hall wall...
 
i'd run the floor parallel to the hall/livingroom wall.
i'ts always good if you can run a floor to and from the main light source .
tradesman
 
OK, back to this again. Moving in within a week and we still haven't decided what to do with the floors.

My boyfriends Dad (carpenter) and brother (has laid his own wood floors) think it would be an absolute nightmare to lay wood in our hallway as there is no straight wall on either side. They think the only thing we can do is lay it widthways (i.e at 90 degrees to the centre wall). I don't know if this would look good in a hallway or not but we're going to do that in the living and dining areas anyway.

Now I think we should just tile through from the hall to the kitchen but I don't really want to as I find tiles cold.

Any ideas??? I'm going nuts thinking about it. (by the way my boyfriend plans to lay the floors himself with some help)
 
How about marking a line down the centre of the hall along your line of sight from the door, then use this as your reference? Use a chalk line.

Widthways will make the space look very narrow.
Leo
 
It would still mean having to make lots of cuts to boards when they meet both walls though which is the real problem I guess
 
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