Flooring around existing trim
I live in an elderly brownstone with original trim on all the doorways. However, the space never had proper flooring put down. Instead of having underlayment and finished flooring on the subfloor, there’s just the subfloor. There never was more either — all of the doorway trim comes right down to the subfloor. I’m going…
I live in an elderly brownstone with original trim on all the doorways. However, the space never had proper flooring put down. Instead of having underlayment and finished flooring on the subfloor, there’s just the subfloor. There never was more either — all of the doorway trim comes right down to the subfloor. I’m going to have someone come in and put down flooring. What’s the standard practice in this situation? Have them cut off the trim high enough to run above the flooring? Have them cut the flooring to fit the trim? Anyone else been in this situation before?
Thanks for the comments. Browntabbystudios, we would *love* to just finish the floors except the previous tenants had the entire place carpeted, so the subfloor (similar to yours) are covered in carpet glue. Apparently you cannot sand this stuff off — the friction heats it up enough for it to stick to the sanding surface and dull it.
Thanks for the tip, eman1234 — I’ll be sure to check with the flooring people before we book them!
You might consider finishing the original flooring. In our previous abode, an 1885 wood frame apartment in Williamsburg, the floors were 5-1/2″ wide red pine plank, never really intended to be a finished floor. It was covered with linoleum from new, although the previous owner had painted all the floors grey after removing the linoleum. We lightly sanded the planks until the gley paint was gone, set the nails, applied sealer and five coats of real polyurethane. They came out great and lasted with us for 16 years still looking great. No cutting trim, doors or anything. Great color too. It was a feature of the apartment. The patches I needed to make in the kitchen were easy to splice in too, so it looked natural.
This is a heck of a lot less work than trying to apply new flooring.
most flooring contractors have a cool little tool that will undercut all moldings to whatever the thickness of the flooring will be….cutting the flooring around the moldings will give you a cheap looking job when the flooring shrinks in the winter