Dale, thanks again for the info. I wanted to just follow-up and let
you know that what I have plan to do is after all the advice I now
have a plan of attack. First I couldn't find any proper bit for the
Zipsaw so decided to purchase a jig saw, but may not necessarily need
it. My father has a very old Black and Decker that's about 3.5 amps
which might not be quite up to the task, I'm not sure. He also has
this thing called a Whem Allsaw, but not sure what it's all about. So,
as a backup, I got a Ryobie saw that isn't super great, but it's not
total junk either and if I don't use it, I can at least return it.
So, what I'm going to do is take my neighbors advice and start at the
doorway or likely all the doorways, but here's the deal as he
explained it. Your correct, undercutting the door casing is the
important part and basically what I'll need to do is measure and notch
the piece that will fit under the door casing. This will allow me to
place the flooring up to the piece of the doorframe that the door
rests against while closed. This means the transition strip will be
under the door while closed, thus achieving the clean look. Now in
order to keep things in order, I then take my next piece of flooring
and rip it length ways and do this to the end of the hall. This way
when I go to lay the next row with full planks, it'll look neat and
will fit together. I can use the other half of the plank to fill-in
the other side of the hall. I unfortunately couldn't find any carbite
blades for the saw I have, but I found some fine blades that will
work, but liekly will die quickly, but at $5 I think it'll get me
through at least one install and that's fine by me. The only part that
really sucks is I found the piece of board on the top step which I
guess is still referred to as the stair nose, is not level with the
concrete floor and I see little I can do beyond pulling it off and
shimming it or just shimming the track I lay down for the stairnose
cap. It's amazing what carpet will hide. The good thing is the cap
will cover any thing I do to the stairs. It'll be nice to work on the
living room floor where at least provided there are no buckled joists
etc. the floor should be pretty level and easy to work on. Concrete
floors offer a different challenge for sure.
So, thanks all for the info and so I'm going to get started on this
pretty soon, like hopefully start tomorrow.
