Should You Put Down The Floor Or Walls First

Or difficult to remove mortar drops when tiling the wall.

Should you put down the floor or walls first. The reason for that is that this can damage the floors. It isn t critical whether you install flooring or paint the walls first in an empty gutted room but there are a few reasons why installing the flooring first might eliminate potential problems. One important reason to install new flooring first is that when you change flooring the baseboards will often need to change position. Stud walls need to be installed over double plated floor joices for the extra weight.

Why should i do my flooring before i paint my walls. You are doing a full scale rip down remodel of your kitchen where everything comes out and gets replaced including walls cabinets flooring and appliances. If time is of the essence it s quicker to hang the drywall and tape out the walls first. The main hesitation that homeowners have in finishing floors before walls is the fear of drips splatters and spills on their new wood or carpet.

Construction s a messy job and if you install the flooring first you ll spend more time on the walls because you ll have to be more careful not to drip joint compound on a new floor. Also it s often better to paint the ceilings first especially given that the ladders will rest on the floors. If you prefer doing the shower floor first you can avoid accidental accidents by covering the new floor. So if you put you subfloor down first it will probably take just as long if not longer to do all the additional measurements to find the plates for accuracy.

For many people their instinct tells them to paint the walls first so they can eliminate the fear of dripping globs of paint on their gorgeous new floors. In new construction homes where no flooring has been laid yet this is the way it works. This problem however can be easily prevented and is not nearly as serious a risk as those involved in painting first. For example if you switch from a thick carpet to a modern laminate floor your baseboards will need to be lowered by 1 2 or 3 4 of an inch.

After the demo it s time to put in new flooring and cabinets. The general construction rule is to work from the top of the room downward. Consider this familiar scenario. The ideal is to first do any prep work to the walls e g ripping up wall paper sanding and patching walls etc.

Also the lack of baseboards and other floor trim means you can paint all the way down without any masking. If you are completely renovating a room by breaking down walls or expanding windows it seems likely that you would want to paint first and do the floors after all of the refuse is removed. However professional tilers will disagree with this. This may result in cracked tile.

From there you should rip up the floors.