Engineered floating-click on plywood questions

The plan FOR NOW is the for old parquet flooring in the hallways to stay so I assume a transitions are needed between the new flooring in the bedrooms. And I plan on starting with the guest bedrooms. I say FOR NOW because I plan on doing the hallway & staircase at a later time...

Ideally I'd do all the new flooring at once. However, just off the master bedroom there's an exterior deck that needs work. I also may need to replace the entire master bathroom tile flooring but I don't want to open that can of worms just yet due to an upcoming 4-pt inspection.

Both the deck & master bathroom jobs would mean walking over and working on & around the new flooring in the master bedroom and main hallway, therefore I'm hesitant to start with either the master bedroom or main hallway for fear of damaging the new flooring working on the deck & master bathroom.

A couple of questions…
1) If running all the same flooring at once, what is the proper method? A) Running the flooring right out of the rooms and into the halls. or B) Having an expansion gap and threshold trim at the doors.

2) If I did have to work over and around it, what could I do to protect the new engineered flooring in the master bedroom & hallway?

There is no "proper" way. Both work fine. The issues are the need for expansion joints and personal preference. Thing is, if you run continuous, you have to be spot on with your layout and there is no margin for error. If you started top right bedroom, running the long way right to left, by the time you come out of the bedroom door you'll need to run down the hall. If your original starting point is off a bit or the walls aren't parallel, your flooring seams will be off and you won't be able to correct them. With tile you can adjust a bit with grout spacing. Not with laminate.
Doing each room individually with an expansion gap at the doors gives you more room for errors.

Having done it both ways and not being a professional I would say in your case on the 1 to 10 DIY skill level the all one big lay would put the job at a solid 8 or 9 whereas doing with expansion joints it would be a 4 or 5. For all the reasons beachguy mentioned. The area I did all one piece was 5 areas on the first floor and they were big rooms with wide archways not doors and I didn’t want to break it up with trim strips. If I was doing an upstairs area such as yours I would want the two halls to be seamless and I would run the grain with the hall coming up the stairs. The rest of the rooms I would do one at a time and might even turn the grain directions to best suit the eye when you enter the room. Would make the logistics of the rest of your work go a lot better also.

This is an older thread and I noticed that my flooring sketch is no longer displaying. Is it better to restart this old thread and re-upload layout or start a new "Where to start installing first flooring planks?" thread?

I would carry on here.

OK, thanks...Here's my flooring sketch again. I'm doing all 3 bedrooms, closets and hallways. I'm neither doing bathrooms (May do in 18x18, 3/8" porcelain tile) nor the stairs (Re-finishing) with this hardwood flooring.

beachguy005 said:

... Your flooring needs to be perfectly straight but your walls won't be. ...

Click to expand...

How do I ensure that the flooring is perfectly straight, if the walls are not?

For a single room you might find center of both end walls and snap a line. then measure back to the wall, that would leave maybe both walls out a little.
Then you would check how that lines up with the door way. sometimes it's better to use the door way to dictate the straight line you want to use.