Somewhere between 32 and 33 degrees lies a phenomenon that few have experienced and none can explain. For that space between degrees is the resting place of the elusive but deadly ANGLE OF TERROR.

As we’ve been laying down all this hardwood flooring, we’ve also been adding an inlaid border around certain rooms in the house. We had no idea it would cause such problems:

My brother was working on a hallway while my boss and I worked in the living room. Now you have to understand the layout of the house. Between the dining room and the little hallway is a passage that’s a little wider than a door. But instead of making this thing straight, or at a 45 degree angle, the designers of the house decided to put in an angle that was functional, but not workable. The angles we had to deal with were measured to 32 and 59 between two perpendicular walls (walls that are at a 90 degree angle to eachother). Well as most of you can tell, 32 and 59 do not add up to 90. So my brother figured his measurements were off and that the builders were going for a 60/30 angle. Nope. Now the angles we ended up cutting in the wood (you usually cut half of the angle on each of the two pieces of wood that meet there) are something like 30/28 and 15/17, which caused a few problems, but nothing that a little wood filler can’t fix. But that was only one problem.

Now my brother had to lay flooring in the hallway on the other side of this border, meaning he had to cut the angle with the miter saw. Problem was, the miter saw isn’t 100% accurate, and even now, we have no idea what the angle is. So through trial and error, he finally cuts a peice that fits. Happy happy day! So he cuts several more peices with the same angle on the miter saw so he doesn’t have to try to find it again (It was somewhere between 32 and 33 degrees). So he continues flooring when suddenly the angle is not matching up anymore. The angle was changing! I’m not sure, but think in about 15 peices, we ended up making about 45 cuts: adjusting the angle, re-cutting, testing, and going back to adjust the angle again. Lemme tell you, it’s scary stuff. All in all, I think it took him about 4 times as long on that hallway as it would have if the builders didn’t have a fetish for driving remodelers INSANE. I never claimed to be normal, but after this job, I’m definitely gonna be a little closer to the edge.

Stay tuned for more Stories of Flooring.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 10th, 2005 at 9:11 pm and is filed under All About Flooring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.