Should You Put Down The Floor Or Walls First

If time is of the essence it s quicker to hang the drywall and tape out the walls first.

Should you put down the floor or walls first.

After the demo it s time to put in new flooring and cabinets. If you prefer doing the shower floor first you can avoid accidental accidents by covering the new floor. 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. 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.

The reason for that is that this can damage the floors. If you tile the floor first you may accidentally damage the new floor by dropping things on it. 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. This problem however can be easily prevented and is not nearly as serious a risk as those involved in painting first.

Also the lack of baseboards and other floor trim means you can paint all the way down without any masking. 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. A professional painting contractor should take proper care in setting up the. 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. Stud walls need to be installed over double plated floor joices for the extra weight. 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. Or difficult to remove mortar drops when tiling the wall.

Consider this familiar scenario. From there you should rip up the floors. Also it s often better to paint the ceilings first especially given that the ladders will rest on the floors. This may result in cracked tile.

Walls are put up first then the floor covering comes later. Why should i do my flooring before i paint my walls. 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. One important reason to install new flooring first is that when you change flooring the baseboards will often need to change position.

The ideal is to first do any prep work to the walls e g ripping up wall paper sanding and patching walls etc.