Finding the Square of a Room
Finding square to a room or wall that is square is just a matter of some simple math. length X’s Width, right. Of course. Like in the example below its’ a simple space of 12 feet by 20 feet =240 square feet.
But now the out of square room or area.
Well, it doesn’t have to be so hard. Measure the from one wall to the other finding the shortest distance. Now do the other two walls.
Now that you have the areas with the shortest distance measure out from the corner 3 feet and the other at 4 feet. Like in the picture below. Now measure diagonally from the three-foot and 4-foot marks. You’ll know when you are perfectly square when you have five feet.
Once you have that down it’s time to use a snap line and follow the 3 foot and 4 lines to the walls. Now you’ll really get to see just how out of square your room is.
If you were going to be installing something like laminate flooring or ceramic tile I like to snap my lines and start on the lines for the tile and then go backward in the out of square areas. However, that doesn’t work well with laminate flooring because it likes to slide all over the place. So what I do is just screw down a straight board right on the floor next to one of my lines in the direction that I’m installing the floor and then return to install it going backward.
I would be really surprised and not trust a contractor that doesn’t know about the 3-4-5 rule. I mean didn’t everyone learn the Pythagorean theorem? LOL, Yeah I don’t think so.
But wait you’re not done. Now you have to check your work. This would be better known as racking it. Once you have all four lines made, you know the box. You will want to measure from corner to corner in an X. You’re looking for the same measurement from one side to the other. Ok, for the ones who don’t know what I mean I made a picture for you. Look lower. Yes below these words of mine.
Comments ( 11 )
I love your site. I been restoring my kitchen myself. I want to use allure flooring mostly because we cook a lot. I like my floors clean, I understand that is allure flooring is water resistant. I want the wood look hard wood look. Do you have any advise for me.
Thank you so much. Allure should be nice in your kitchen. And yes it is water resistant to a extent. I would say just install it up to the cabinets and not under them.
Great info on how to check and square up a room.
Thanks Dominick
This method works fine if you have a 4 sided-4 corner room. My great room in which I’m attempting to lay laminate flooring has a recess on one wall, and a bay window on the opposite wall for a total of 10 corners making it so I don’t know how to square the room….. and something is definitely off somewhere.
Laying the first row away from the wall and snapping a chalk line doesn’t work because unless that first row (and chalk line) is square, everything else will be off.
You can try to make a straight line from the door to a long wall and square that section. Yeah not always an easy thing to do.
Dear sir best way to square up a room for a grid ceiling
Thank you very much.
Best thing to do is measure one wall and mark centre. Measure other wall and mark centre. Take a chalk line through Centre (crosshairs). Now u can measure from wall to centre line to find measurements for flooring.
so once the room is squared, I assume the area outside the square is covered by molding.
Normally, but it would really depend on how out of square the room is. Could be a lot.
thanks