Loft flooring

January 17, 2023

A couple months ago I received the hardwood flooring.

The delivery came on a rainy day, so I had to work fast getting the material inside.

I re-stacked the pallet of boxes inside the studio so it could acclimate.

This 1/2 in. thick and 5 in. wide engineered maple flooring has a 2mm wear layer and a “vintage natural” finish. I was limited to glueing down engineered hardwood due to most of the flooring going down over a concrete slab.

The first row took a long time because I had to carefully cut the boards to fit around the curb, lay them out perfectly straight and secure them with some nails that will be covered by the baseboard.

Everything is aligned so the transition moulding sits flush with the face of the loft edge.

The following rows went much faster, as I could push against the nailed-and-glued first row.

The matching 2 in. transition strip here is not glued down yet.

The next day, after the first few rows were dry, I glued the transition moulding in place.

I used a general construction adhesive for the transition strip, as I needed it to span larger gaps than flooring glue is designed for.

Over the next few days I made steady progress, working in four row sections.

Scraps were tapped into joints on the last row to keep them aligned until I could come back and continue.

Once the first area was dry, I installed the floor outlet box that will be under the couch.

I’m not totally sure what I’ll plug into this, but it may be a Roomba that docks under the couch.

The rectanglular floor boxes for the desk were fairly simple to work around.

One floor box has power outlets, while the other has audio and networking connections.

However the round conduit flange was much trickier, as I had to cut one of the boards that wraps around the circular conduit in half and slide each side into place.

I custom ordered a 1/8 in. steel disc with an 8 in. OD and 4-3/8 in. ID to cover the transition between the flooring and the hole in the conduit flange.

Working under a low ceiling was a burden, but thankfully that was only a small amount of the room.

The floor feels noticeably stiffer now that the glue has dried.

I then mounted the floor boxes in for power, audio and networking.

All of 16 of these XLR jacks will be connected to a patch-bay at the desk using a couple of audio snakes.

The power one was pretty easy to wire up, but I expect it will be a real paint to wire up all the audio and networking jacks on the other one.

I’m hoping the boxes can remain closed when all cables are hooked up, but I don’t know for sure yet.

The floor boxes are nearly perfectly flush when closed.

Stairs
Door Frames