Hey guys,

I'm in the midst of putting down some 3/8" Armstrong engineered wood floor on a first floor concrete slab as a floating installation over Armstrong's premium underlayment. I've got two questions about how this floor will meet my front door entry.

The first relates to the front door entry itself. The previous floor in this space was a glued-down wood floor that I've pulled up and removed the adhesive underneath with Sentinel & a degreaser. Below are a couple of pictures of the entry. My question here is, basically, is there anything wrong with this entry that I should address now? For example, there seems to be a small dark patch which I think is this old compressible material that's put in between expansion joints in slabs. You will also note slight traces of the old floor adhesive, as well as some jagged edges where this slab apparently terminates near the entry. Generally, I'm just looking for assurance that I'm OK to proceed here (or a clear warning that I shouldn't).



Second, because Armstrong calls for a pretty hefty 1/2" expansion joint around all vertical surfaces, I was assuming that the best way to handle this transition was to install either a threshold or reducer molding. However, the previous installation appears to have just been caulked (which I removed as well) to the door frame bottom. This got me thinking about whether caulk would be a better alternative here for whatever reason.

Any comments here would be awesome. Thanks guys.

 

I would scrape off the glue and use a grinder and clean up the edge of the concrete as needed, fill in voids with a vinyl patch. Once it's dry, caulk the concrete to the door with a polyurethane sealant, which is usually what works best on concrete. You don't want air coming under the door creating any condensation. I would also undercut the casing and slip in a piece of wood that is rabbeted to allow the floor to slip under it and give the floor room to expand. (Rip a t-moulding in half, for example.)

 

Thanks XSleeper. The only voids are a couple along this door frame and wall where they seemed to be filled with this compressible material I mentioned before. I don't want to scrape those clean and fill them with patch, do I?

Also, speaking of the molding, am I OK to just glue this down to the slab with something like Liquid Nails or should I nail this into the sides of the door jamb and/or the slab?

 

Ok, the picture made it look like a void. Yes, I think that a little glue on the moulding is all you would need.

 

You want to clean up the edge cutting away anything that will interfere with the installation of the molding.

Here is how I did my basement molding up to the door threshold, similar application.

Used a "T" molding and cut off one of the sides, it has a metal bracket screwed to the floor.

 

That looks nice! Is there any advantage to use a T molding with one of the sides cut off instead of using, say, a threshold?