Solid Hardwood, Engineered and Laminate Flooring - Advice needed for hardwood installment direction

Ok, so I have everything ready to install my new pre-finished solid bamboo flooring (~3" wide planks w/ uniform 3' long) in my condo. My question is in which direction to lay the flooring? the floor joists & hallway run north-south. the office on one end of the hallway is lengthwise east-west, as well as the living room & dining area (split by the hallway, but is one room). Front door lines up exactly w/ hallway from the south side of the living/dining room area. Total square footage is only about 450. only the office, living room, dining room, & hallway will be floored w/ the bamboo (bathroom & kitchen which are on east side of hallway are tiled).

the twist: A handyman-type guy i know says to run the planks north-south due to one's view when sitting in the living room area. he says you DO NOT want to be able to sit on the couch (against west wall) & be able to look down the seams that would follow all the way to the east wall of the dining area? However, this goes against everything I've read regarding flooring needing to be installed perpendicular to the joists (subfloor is OSB board w/ sound-muffling underlayment). He says it all should be oriented the same way that the hallway's planks would go (i.e. north-south).

Also, what to use as a transition between bamboo flooring & very rough slate tiling (less than 1/8" height difference)

Thanks in advance for your advice!

It's really just personal preference. Normally the floor looks best when looking down the planks instead of looking against them (perpendicular to your view). So the hallways look best when doing it this way and you also need to cut less pieces. Or, when entering the home you would rather look down the joints (which may be parallel to the hallway, I don't know).

As for the transition to the slate tiles you could purchase a reducer strip made out of the same wood at your flooring store.

Borderline,

First off Bamboo is an extremely stable species of wood flooring, but nailing it into OSB (as with any hardwood flooring) is simply NOT recommended, and in fact you may want to check your Warranty Papers that came with your prefinished bamboo... The warranty may want you to Glue down as well, but as where you have sound deadining material - that is not going to work??

If you decide to go ahead and install on the osb subfloor, I would run the Bamboo Perpendicular to the floor joists. Now, in the Hallway (if you are going to end up running the short direction) you may not like this look at all. You can take a CHANCE and run the Bamboo parallel with the joist (long way down the hallway).

Nailing down Bamboo should be done with a manual or pneumatic CLEAT nailer. Make sure you are not splitting the tungs on the flooring, if you are - then you have the pressure on the compressor too high or you are hitting the manual nailer too hard. Try it on a piece of junk flooring before you get really going. On the outside walls, when you have to top nail, pre drill and then use finish nails!! Using a pnuematic finish nailer is dangerous to the flooring FINISH! It WILL crack the finish and probaly the flooring as well, trust me.

Just as the previous replier said - You can buy the transition "T" molding from your flooring supplier - that way it will match exactly. Well, with that being said - Bamboo (Natural or Carbonized) does vary in color between boards, so you may want to dry lay out your floor before you get going, open up several boxes and pick and choose your boards.


Greg in Maine