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That time a builder told me my transition strips were all wrong
I had this builder walk through a job I did last fall in Cleveland, and he pointed at my T-moldings and said they looked like speed bumps. He told me I was leaving too much gap between the two floors, like a half inch, which made the transition strip stick up way too high. He showed me how he runs his stuff with barely an eighth inch gap and uses a thinner profile strip. Now I adjust every door threshold and transition to sit almost flush with both surfaces. Has anyone else had a builder tear apart something you thought was standard?
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the_ben5mo ago
And @sanchez.ivan is right, that fat gap is a crutch for lazy installs.
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keith1645mo ago
I mean, I get what they're saying about the big gap looking sloppy, but I don't know if calling it a crutch is totally fair. There's gotta be some middle ground where you leave enough room for the wood to move without it looking like a canyon. Maybe it's just me, but I've seen floors buckle because someone was too stingy with that gap. So yeah, lazy installs are a thing, but so are floors that pop up in the middle of summer because you didn't give them any breathing room.
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sanchez.ivan5mo ago
Yeah I read something from a flooring installer in Detroit who said the same thing about using that thin quarter inch gap. He claimed most guys leave way too much room and it makes the whole floor look sloppy. It stuck with me because I always thought a bigger gap was safer for expansion but now I check every transition with a level to make sure it sits dead flat.
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