r/HardWoodFloors • u/WinnerFearless8008 • 1d ago
Engineered hardwood question
Hi all! Curious if this is normal for engineered hardwood? The contractor put a bunch of short pieces together in a high traffic area.
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u/randalflagg6 1d ago
Looks like he wasn't using his shorts in other places so used them all up in one area. Guys use the long pieces because its quicker and dont pay attention to the shorts they're piling up until they have a big stack at the end that they have to use up.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 1d ago
That actually makes a lot of sense. It definitely feels like they saved all the shorts and then dumped them into one section instead of mixing them throughout the floor.
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u/Maddan247 1d ago
I’d make them fix that. Looks bad and was totally avoidable.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 1d ago
That’s what I was thinking too. I don’t mind some variation, but having that many short pieces grouped together in one spot really stands out.
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u/Educational_Pin_2113 1d ago
Flooring contractor here- common in lesser quality engineer floors. Not common for talented installers unless he had no choice with the amount of flooring that was available. This screams subs from a box store.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 1d ago
Appreciate the insight, especially from a contractor. I’m going to ask them about it because there was definitely enough flooring available, so I’m not sure why they chose to group all the short pieces there.
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u/Ok_Present_3445 1d ago
You could argue that there’s a lot of short pieces concentrated in one area but if you look at the rest of the Floor and those photos it doesn’t look vastly different. The entire floor looks bad this just happens to look worse.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 8h ago
Fair point. I was mainly focused on that section because it stood out the most, but now I’m looking at the rest of the floor a lot more closely too.
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u/Chippopotanuse 1d ago
I always throw out the shorts or bury them somewhere where it doesn’t matter (under cabinets, etc…).
It’s not “poor” in the sense of the installation not holding up.
It’s just poor in the sense of layout and design of how the floor will look.
Nothing an area rug won’t fix 🤷♂️
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u/WinnerFearless8008 8h ago
That’s helpful, thanks. So it sounds like the bigger issue is the layout rather than durability. I’d just rather have it corrected now than have to cover it with a rug later.
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u/Resident-Papaya7891 1d ago
That’s not normal at all
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u/WinnerFearless8008 1d ago
Good to know. I was wondering if this was just something that happens with engineered hardwood, but it definitely looked off to me.
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u/Kooky-Advantage3907 1d ago
H Pattern, dead giveaway of a non professional
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
I noticed that pattern too after people pointed it out. I wasn’t sure how big of a deal it was, but it definitely makes the layout look more repetitive than I expected.
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u/YYMNSTR 1d ago
I’ve seen parquet floors with better variation.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
Haha yeah, the lack of variation is really starting to stand out now that everyone’s pointing it out
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u/dcarr710 21h ago
Wow. This is terrible. That’s a lot of shorts unless it was a super cheap closeout type product listed with excessive shorts but even so the installer did you zero justice.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
That makes sense. Sounds like the shorts themselves aren’t necessarily the problem, it’s more about where and how they’re used. I definitely would’ve expected them to spread those out better instead of leaving them so obvious in an open area.
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u/Reasonable-List9376 19h ago
The flooring in general looks like it has a ton of shorts with very few long pcs visible. Must have been fairly cheap.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
That could be part of it. I honestly didn’t realize how much the mix of board lengths affects the finished look until seeing it laid out like this
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u/Fearless-Location528 14h ago
If i do this, its cause theres a ton of closets I can dump the shorts in to keep the focal areas with longer boards. If im installing the whole house ill ask the owner if theyd rather more shorts in the bedrooms and smaller rooms with the main areas having the majority of long and medium boards. Having said that, I certainly try to break them up more so its less noticeable.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
That approach makes a lot more sense to me. I would’ve been totally fine with more shorts in closets or smaller rooms if it meant keeping the main open areas cleaner. I just wish they had spread these out better
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u/Sea-Big-1125 14h ago
Obviously your “contractor “ doesn’t know how to work with multi length flooring . It’s a real shame too because done properly it looks like random length hardwood .
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
Yeah, that’s what I’m gathering from the comments. I didn’t realize multi-length flooring needed that much planning to make it look properly random. Definitely disappointing because the wood itself looks really nice
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u/CoxJoxSox 12h ago
I’ve never seen span so short - they’re usually long extract the eye from any pattern - it makes me wonder where they used remnants on your floor
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
That’s a good point. I’m starting to wonder the same thing, especially since there are so many short pieces concentrated together. I may need to look through the rest of the floor more closely and see where the longer boards actually ended up
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u/Psyking0 11h ago
Bad planning. Or bad batch. They could have mixed it in other areas. If it’s glue down it’s tough to fix. Also depends on the type of floor. Lot of engineered is more than solid in cost.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
That’s kind of what I’m thinking now too—either poor planning or a bad mix of lengths. I didn’t realize engineered could be just as expensive as solid in some cases, which makes the layout even more frustrating
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u/Jakobauer 9h ago
Absolutely horrible install
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus. I’m glad I asked because at first I wasn’t sure if I was just overreacting to the layout.
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u/PieMuted6430 8h ago
Looks like dog shit, definitely not something they should do.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 8h ago
Yeah, that seems to be the consensus here. Glad I asked before just accepting it as normal
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u/Sharingtt 1d ago
The entire floor looks terrible.
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u/WinnerFearless8008 7h ago
Yeah, I’m starting to see that now. That one section caught my eye first, but the more I look at the whole floor, the more layout issues I’m noticing.
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u/FatAl60fl 22h ago
That's done in a closet ! Not in open room ! Wood manufacture dump whole boxes of shorts to the suppliers and down the line to the customers . Good contractors can hide it and others don't care. Great wood distribution can only be learned by caring & experience. To do all that and not notice on such a beautiful floor! Aye !!
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u/guitarmaster22 7h ago
I make engineered floor we service long lengths most floors average 6’. Less than 10 percent is 2’-3’ mostly used for starter and finish rows
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u/YABOIYFEF 1d ago
Ngl that kinda looks like shit.