Proper Way To Lay Plywood For Floor

Select the smooth side of the plywood to be facing up.

Proper way to lay plywood for floor.

These tips cover plywood characteristics and proper installation of plywood. This is important and very hard to correct if done improperly. Use wood filler to repair any uneven areas. Take our word for it.

Lay the panels out flat to cover the subflooring. But a number of precautions must be taken to ensure a successful installation. The type of wood board you use will depend on what the existing floor is made from and the type of floor covering you want to lay. Correction to this wood product problem can clean your wallet.

For heavy flooring such as hard tiles the subfloor should be thick plywood but for soft flooring vinyl carpet and soft tiles thin plywood or even hardboard. While personal preference is a factor the direction in which you run hardwood flooring boards is governed by visual and structural guidelines. Typical floor joists in residential construction sit on 16 inch centers but depending on the framing the joists might be. Dry fit components first to make sure sheets land on the center of joists.

Measure the room and determine how many 4 x 8 foot panels of inch cdx plywood will be needed to cover the floor. Install one sheet of plywood at a time. The plywood sheets lay perpendicular to the floor joists. While most floor tile these days is installed onto a layer of cement board or similar backerboard it is possible to lay tile directly over plywood.

Make sure the plywood is square. If plywood is not dealt with properly it can swell and create major problems with roofing flooring or siding. Always install plywood or osb long ways across the joists. Plywood underlayment is a thin plywood material that is most commonly used under resilient flooring materials such as vinyl and linoleum sheets and tiles.

A number of different types of substrate are used for tile including plywood. It can also be used under hardwood laminate and carpet but this is much less common these days because subflooring is typically smooth enough for these materials many of which are installed with a different type of underlayment or pad. The most common form of wooden subfloor is plywood. The plywood board we used is only 5mm thick which means that the difference in height between the hallway floor and bedroom floor is minimal.

The correct direction for laying hardwood floors.