Hardwood flooring question?

Question

We are putting in hardwood flooring in our family room. Now we have a brick fireplace in the corner of the room that takes a chunk of the floor in a diagonal angle. To make the wood fit, we have to cut it diagonal, now thats going to get ugly. My question for the other room we used baseboards, what do we use in the case of a brick fireplace.

Answer 1

square the floor with brick

Answer 2

Cutting the wood at a diagonal should not be a problem and as to the baseboards around the fireplace, you probably can not nail them to the brick, but you can use a construction adhesive. Another option is to put up a decorative tile against the floor and the brick. This could be quite attractive if you choose the correct time, get tile the same width as the baseboard in the rest of the room.

Answer 3

This is what I do with homes similar to yours. To begin with, we picture frame all fireplaces when we install wood. Picture framing simply means that instead of running the installed flooring directly into the fireplace, you run boards perpendicular to the flooring that is being installed. This will form a Beautiful accent and border around the fireplace.



Now for the magic. Take a board and mark the height of the board the entire way around the fireplace. Get a cheap Masonry angle grinder. Move the board and where you marked, undercut the brick. Not to deep but just enough for the wood to fit snugly underneath when it will be installed. You may have to chip a little out after you undercut but this gives it a customer appearance as if it was installed before the fireplace was even there and eliminates the need for caulking or Tuck pointing the morter.

Answer 4

Start your flooring at the fireplace so you have more control over the workmanship quality of the installation in that diagonal area.



To cover the area of floor that meets the edge of he brick hearth, you will need to use molding to outline the brick hearth as the last step after baseboards are installed against the other walls.



Go to the home improvement store and be sure to pick molding that will be the same wood or stained color as the new floor. Now, the size of this molding will have to be proportionate to the space. Some dinky molding will look out of place and something over one and a half inches will probably look too big. You could go with quarter round (picture a circle, cut into four equal slices, that is the shape of quarter round molding), or you can get cove molding, which is concave in shape.



Just be sure to stain and urethane the molding before you install it because any slip of the brush will be very difficult to clean off of the brick.



Good luck with your new flooring project.

Answer 5

I have seen, (sisters house), them take a slightly different color tone of wood, run it along the fireplace hearth, patience is needed, but mark and cut it to fit as closely as possible. Use an offset pencil to mark along the brick and it's contours. Again, time to do it right.



Now mine was flat to flat hearth, bricks, I just ran the wood as close as possible then filled the minor gap with spray foam insulation then trimmed it flat. You can not even tell the difference between it and real wood - (I have oak floors and used the yellow expandable insulation).

Answer 6

probably the best would be to cut the flooring as close to the brick as you can and then just put cleat silicone caulking over the seam