How to Find a Straight Line When Installing Wood Flooring

It's common practice to begin laying hardwood flooring against the longest wall in the room, but that won't always give you the best result. If the wall is out of square, the floor will look skewed if you use it as a reference. There's another reason that professional installers often start the in the middle of the floor: it distributes the wood expansion in two directions. The ideal starting line extends perpendicularly from the main vantage point to the opposite wall or, if you're laying the floor diagonally, from one corner of the room to the other.

Straightedge
Pencil
Carpenter's square
2 nails
Hammer
Chalkline
Tape measure

Instructions

- 1
  Establish your starting point. In many cases, that's the middle of the entry door, but it depends on the orientation of the floorboards and whether or not you're continuing the flooring into another room. If you start laying in a hallway that extends into a living room, for example, it's probably better to start along the hallway wall.
- 2
  Draw a straight line on the floor with a straightedge and pencil that goes through the starting point and is parallel to the doorway. Draw a line perpendicular to this one about 24 inches long, using a carpenter's square. If you're starting against a wall, use the wall as a reference for the perpendicular line.
- 3
  Drive a nail into the subfloor at the starting point and wrap a chalkline around it. Stretch the chalkline to the opposite end of the room and align it with the perpendicular line. Set the line down on the floor, but don't snap it yet.
- 4
  Measure the distance from the mark to both side walls with a measuring tape and divide each measurement by the width of one of the flooring boards. If either result yields a leftover of less than an inch, move the line by that amount toward the wall. This assures that you won't have to cut a filler strip that is too narrow. Snap the line after making this adjustment.
- 5
  Make the center of the floor your starting point if the walls are irregular or angled with respect to the floorboard direction.
- 6
  Find the centers of the two walls with respect to which the boards will be roughly parallel, using a tape measure. Snap a chalkline between these two points, then measure the length of this line and mark the center.
- 7
  Align the corner of a carpenter's square with the mark and draw a line perpendicular to the chalkline. Snap another chalkline on top of the line you penciled in to give you your starting line.

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