DIY Adviser

Be The first To Comment

Brenda has a couple of do it yourself questions about flooring and insulating basements:

"My house is small, a huge archway between living room and dining, dining room only 10 ft. wide, kitchen also large doorway . I want to replace carpet in dining area with wood floors. Do I put the wood floors in living and dining area or all 3 rooms. Kitchen cabinets light oak, stair way in dining room dark walnut. Also how do I insulate wood floors as the basement is unheated?"

First of all insulating a floor over an unheated basement is a good idea independent of whether or not you are installing a wood floor. We would recommend that Brenda do that to the entire basement. Use caulk to seal any holes in the floor from the basement side.

 

Use fiberglass batts or blankets and fit in between the floor joists. Be sure to install the insulation with the vapor barrier side up, i.e. against the floor of the heated upper floor.

To support the insulation and hold it in place you can use one of several techniques:

  • Use 1 inch by 2 inch furring strips nailed to the floor joists at the walls and then every 16 inches. Tuck the insulation above the strips into the space between the joists.
  • Staple wire mesh to the joists to hold the insulation in place.
  • Staple wire across the joists every few feet.

 

We decided to demonstate the first method using furring strips. We used 8 foot long 1X2 furring strips but 1X3s would have worked just as well. We found the 1x2s at a big box store for 99 cents each. We placed them at 16 inch centers crosswise to the floor joists.

Furring strips are cheap but they are not exactly quality lumber. They are typically not straight and may be twisted. When nailing them hold them firmly against the joist. Tuck the insulation up above the furring strips with the faced side up.

As far as the dining room floor goes, it is not necessary to to extend the wood floor beyond the dining room.

Transition pieces are made to provide an interface between tiled or carpeted rooms and wood floors. We installed an engineered cherry wood floor that transitions to a carpeted dining room and ceramic tile entry way. In this case the transition is a piece of solid cherry.

 

The transition pieces were provided by the manufacturer of the flooring. One consideration is that these transition pieces are pretty unobtrusive but may provide an obstacle for a wheelchair. If that is a consideration then one floor throughout with no transitions would of course be more accessible. The size of the obstacle depends on the relative thickness of the wood floor and the flooring it replaced. If you are thinking of ¾ inch solid hardwood it may be a more of a bump than if it is engineered wood flooring.

The other side of the dining room also is accessible through the tiled entry way. In this case the carpet is folded under and tacked without a transition piece. So, Brenda does not have to commit to a wood floor throughout all three rooms if she does not want the contrasting wood between the kithchen cabinets and floor and/or stairway and floor. Today, designers are specifying contrasting woods even among sets of cabinets in the same rooms. So I don't think having light oak cabinets and a dark floor would be an issue. My recommendation to Brenda, if she decides to install wooden floors throughout all three rooms, would be to tend towards the darker colors for the flooring.