Gluing Wood Flooring with a Steinway Grand Piano in the Room

In Washington, DC I got a job on the tenth floor of a high rise. Many high rise buildings are steel framed with concrete slabs for the sub-floor. This job was no exception.

Concrete slabs are ideal for wall to wall carpeting or vinyl but when it comes to wood floors they require either adding a plywood sub-floor, floating them or gluing the flooring in place.

This one job was a glue down installation. The major problem was the Steinway grand piano in the room. The owner did not want to pay to have it removed so I had to figure out how to install a glue down floor with the piano in the same room.

To be honest I am not very fond of glue down floors. I seem to always get glue on myself, the flooring and all over the tools.. The other problem with glue down wood flooring is that the floor that you are standing on isn't set up so it can and does move when you try to tap the new boards in tight. Another problem is getting glue oozing up between the boards. This can happen if you apply too much glue to the sub-floor.

This job required that I bring up all my tools up the service elevator which is very common in high rise buildings. Since this often requires several trips it makes it necessary to lock the truck up every time so that tools don't get stolen. There are also strict rules about what hours you can work.

I started gluing the flooring in place along one wall and continued until I got to the Steinway grand piano. From prior experience with these kind of pianos I knew I would have to protect the floor as the weight of the piano on just three small wheels exerts tremendous pounds per square inch (PSI) on the wood floor which could actually dent the wood.

I placed a small piece of plywood on the finished floor and lifted one of the wheels onto the plywood. Since I was working alone this took a little doing but I managed to get it placed properly without loosening the floor.

I continued gluing the floor down under the piano till I got to the second leg. I placed a second piece of plywood on the finished flooring. Lifting the second leg and pivoting on the first leg that was on the finished floor I managed to get the second leg on the finished floor. Working around the support for the pedals was also a little challenging.

I finally got the third leg of the piano on the finished floor and finished gluing the rest of the floor.

I also had to remove the vinyl flooring that was glued to the concrete in the kitchen., I worked on this the second day and thought I could start a little earlier since I was just removing vinyl. I found out later that steel and concrete buildings tend to amplify sound. The owner of the condo told me they had complaints from five floors down from my just running the flat bar across the concrete.

All in all the floor came out great and I learned some new tricks of the trade in the process.