colega architect

Highcliff - Floor Framing Complete

The underfloor plumbing and electrical rough ins were completed and the city cleared the installation of the tongue and groove subfloor. There are a few interesting things to note about laying a subfloor.  Lets focus on understanding what goes into placing different finishes on top of the subfloor and how that could affect the process and design. We are always looking to have a seamless and smooth transition between material changes. A typical example to discuss occurs at the threshold between hardwood flooring and tile. Since the assembly thickness of tile is greater than that of hardwood flooring, the subfloor needs to be recessed to keep the two materials in plane. The installation of tile requires a bed of mortar, then thinset and followed by the actual tile itself. Hardwood flooring is simply installed over a moisture barrier over the subfloor. There are various ways to achieve the required depression in the subfloor. In this particular case we have used two methods - 1. Coordinate with the structural engineer to reduce the joist depth at the required locations and 2. Specify thinner plywood at the required tile locations. Although this might seem trivial, it is very important so that the finishes are flush and the details are clean. Check back in soon as the walls of the Highcliff Project begin to go up.