Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Getting close HT listening room

Looks great.
Had a friend do his floors with the home depot stuff like 10 years ago. It holds up quite good.

YAY.. the floor is finally done. Now to get all the faceplates installed ready for the speakers.

eeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww the push is on now you go girl

96 connectors that need to be installed. Not looking forward to that part of the job.

Been there. TEDIOUS!

Hardwood flooring isn't too difficult. you need a few basic tools; a compressor, a good floor nailer for thicker flooring (3/4") or a smaller one smaller one for thinner flooring (3/8"), and a couple of standard brad/finish nailers for tight spots, provided you have a plywood sub-floor to nail into - if not, then it can become more difficult. OR you can glue down a floor, or the engineered snap together kind like Matt is showing. For a basement, the engineered type is also more dimensionally stable as basements tend to be more humid.
Either way, you'll also need a chop saw and a table saw table saw.
So once you're past the $2000 or so in tools, the rest is pretty easy - be prepared to have a learning curve. With either traditional tung/groove nail down or the snap together kind, you are bound to tap an edge too hard and damage the finish, and you'll make wrong cuts so extra material is needed.
I've done several 1000+ sq feet installs of pre-finished 3/8" and 3/4" tung and groove nail down. The first floor I needed 15% overage, the last floor I did was under 5% overage. I've also done a "standard" nail in unfinished oak floor, belt/drum sanded it, then finished with a marine varnish (it was a laundry room). I prefer the refinished stuff.
Leave plenty of room around the perimeter for expansion, and let everything for the install sit in the room where its going in for at least a week, open the boxes of wood - wood expands much more width-wise (against the grain) than length-wise.

I paid for an install once, and it was a complete FUBAR. We had a slab floor and wanted nail down t/g, so a plywood subfloor was needed. The contractor ended up with a fresh batch and it was still wet from the treating process. He knew, but didn't say anything... After about 2 months of having the most beautiful santos mahogany floor, it started to cup, then it started to buckle, then small mountains, 4-6 rows wide and 6" tall!, across the length of the room, started to pop up. Called the installer and he said he installed it correctly. Called the flooring Mfr and they said "you installed it, its yours to keep!" So we were stuck in the middle. We repaired the mountains and lived with the cupped floor for years, but ended up replacing it all before we moved. In the process of tearing it out we found all the nails were rusty. We had done a moisture test on the slab prior to the install and it was dry, so it had to be wet plywood dumping its moisture into the flooring. Live and learn.
SO if you have a large enough room, DIY pays for the tools compared to having it installed.

Thanks. Yeah, I've got a good sized compressor, a brad nailer, finishing nailer, miter saw, and table saw. Don't have a floor nailer and would have to weigh the options of renting ($35/day - $135/week for a nice one) or buying whenever that day would come.

My "vision" would be to replace a bunch of cheap carpet from the previous owners, outdated tile in the entry, and the existing hardwood in the kitchen, which is actually in good shape everywhere but a 3 foot x 3 foot section where it is really torn up for some reason... Seems like a shame to rip that all up, but for uniformity, it would make sense.

Again, this will be WAY down the road, unfortunately. In the meantime, I am hoping to cut out that 3ft x 3ft section and replace just those sections as the previous homeowner DID have a good amount of extra matching wood pieces. Sure, then that would stand out a little bit as being really new looking, but it will just take a little time before it matched the light wear of the rest of the wood. I just hate the crappy carpet in the living room and dining room (why anyone would choose carpet in a dining room, besides cost I guess, is beyond me), and the dated white tile entryway which has grout coming loose.

Anyway, don't we have a HT to build in this thread? Sorry for sidetracking (in a normal Axiom derailment fashion).

Why don't you get a surface sander and take the top coat off the whole of the kitchen floor. Then it will just be bare wood. Then you can look into the Rubio Monocoat oil and just refinish the kitchen floor.

That way you can see if you like the oil finish rather than going with a pre-finishis urethane. If you don't like it at a future date you can still rip it out, but you get a nicer looking for for the time inbetween while you wait and figure out what you want to do.

Some of the areas are really gouged. Not sure what caused it, but it isn't just surface scratches. I am still baffled as to how they got so damaged. Almost like a large dog scratched and dug at some of them, but I don't think that is it, just that it would take something really damaging like that. Not sure if it would be easier to cut out and replace the damaged section, or sand, somehow fill in the deep gouges, and refinish the whole thing.

Spent my 5 1/2 hours getting all the speaker drops all continuity tested to make sure there are no cross talking and all the face plates installed. The master plate where the pre-amp and power amps got all wired up, then I went to install the face pate on. It wouldn't fit. So I thought it might be that the 5 way binding posts were just too large to fit through the holes on the face plate. So struggled for another 30 minutes to convince 16 screwdown posts off, only to find out the plastic insert is a no standard size. They provide a single face plate, but I have it setup for a 5 gang. CRAP!

Now I have to see if I can enlarge the openings for 4 of the 5 holes on the 5 gang face plate so that the insert will fit. I've already stood on one 5 gang pate and shattered it, so I had to order another as nobody had them in stock. you can't get them in the shatterproof nylon up here, and the regular ones are already $18.

Nothing like a bodge job. Got the benchtop router table out with a carbide spiral bit and slowly shaved off 3/16" off the top and bottom of the faceplate opening and 3/32: off the sides. Well, I ended up shaving a bit more than that off one of them as I screwed up a bit. But they now fit.



Once that got sorted out I could get on with putting up some of the speakers. I mounted the QS8's on the sides. Sadly due to bad planning on my side, or was it just that it would have been a total pain to try and get it to align up, but the speakers mounting bracket doesn't align up with a stud. I ended up useing 2 of the 75lbs wall ancor screws to attach it to the wall. I am pretty sure that it won't fail. There is a support beam for the upper level ceiling just to the left of the speaker but I thought it would look just wrong screwed into that.



I will have to wait for some friends or family to come around to get the LFR1100's installed. Just too flipping heavy for me to lug around. I also need to decide how I am going to put the VP180 on the front. I do have access to 3 studs around the center of the room, but wonder if it would look funny just hanging off the wall. I cam build myself a simple stand for the speaker and give myself some small shelving for CD's or DVD's along the front. Decoration really as everything is stored digitally anyways.