Borders/patterns with engineered hardwood floors

[thrytis]

Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with having a border or pattern with engineered flooring? I'm looking to do a contrasting color wood around the border of a room, something like:



(This and other more complex designs from http://www.bennhardwoodfloors.com/ap...otoid=65582029)

All the information i've found on doing designs or borders in the floors are for nail down solid hardwood floors. My floor to install it over is concrete (at grade), so i'm looking at engineered flooring, either floating or glued down. I'm not interested in the hassle or extra expense of putting down plywood to go with the nail down option.

I figure the border is probably pretty straight forward if i go with glue down, but since i'm new to this and have read a lot of issues with glue down, i'm leaning towards a floating install. Would it be possible to use a glued edged floating flooring, and make my own splines to glue in where the wood changes directions at the end?

Thanks!

[Mr__Bill]

I have seen it done twice. Once was a disaster as they were unable to snap the border to the main floor and tried to glue the whole thing down. I think it was either taken up or covered with carpet it looked so bad. The second one used a flooring where the end joints were the same as the long joints. They used a floor that was dark in the center with a lighter strip around it. Not really a parquet pattern but it looked ok in the room. The trick to the second was the matching snap joints on both the end and long sides and being able to lay the center floor with factory edges on all sides. This necessitated having all the joints lining up but they did not stand out too bad. I haven't been back to see it so I don't know how it stood up. I do remember the guy laying the floor cursing it as the center did not want to stay square. He had decided to do the center first and then the edges and nailed down a straight edge to work against. The corners where the border met was rather funky, as the ends no longer had factory joints on them. He staggered the joint and had a simple butt joint where the ends met the long edges.

Hope this is of some help to you

Bill
So far this is the longest I have ever lived....

[thrytis]

Thanks Bill! It doesn't sound too encouraging though. I would say one thing to take from this is it takes a lot of extra careful planning of the order to install the entire floor and the joints.