Adjusting hardwood across a floor

zakany

I have a room with two openings on one wall that is conspicuously in line-of-sight. So I want to start there, with flooring aligned with the openings. Opposite wall is fifteen feet away and is obscured by furniture and curtains. But it's an outside wall.

Thing is, across the room there is a three-inch difference between the distances of those two walls.

If I, instead, start at the outside wall the wood won't align with the room openings. If I start at the openings, it won't align with the outside wall.

What I thought I might do is start at the openings, but after a couple feet start skewing the boards slightly by placing a dime between them at the long end, concealing the gap under the baseboard as best as I can.

Would this work?

Is there, perhaps, a better way to adjust floor board alignment as you march across a room?

Am I causing a problem that is worse than what I'm trying to solve?

One saving grace is that this is character hickory, so the board lines are obscured a bit by the strong variation in color within boards.

joecaption

I'd start along the longest wall and work my way over to the doorway.

zakany

The openings are more than a doorway. The niche is ten feet wide or so and will have an entertainment center in it, so I'm afraid that the flooring not crossing straight across the opening would look...off.

zakany

Whew! Only two hours of swearing, but I got it. Ended up using a laser sheet to align the flooring. That middle 10-inch wall end was actually twisted. The entrance wall to the left was skewed about an inch over four feet. Gah! What a mess to align straight board to.

You don't notice any of this when there's just carpeting.

At some points, I have to take expansion credit for undercutting the drywall. At other points, the base molding and shoe barely cover. But to the eye, the floor and walls appear to be as aligned as they can be.

I even tried shooting a laser line down the grout lines in the adjoining entry hall, but that was merely an exercise in frustration.

On the plus side, I got to play with one of my Xmas gifts.