How To Install A Floor Register

Even if you lot make your living by installing straight-lay strip flooring, there are still some relatively simple things you tin do to upsell your jobs. For example, you tin pic-frame a fireplace or a room, run flooring diagonally, or use a different species as a feature strip. Even easier than all of these, however, is installing matching wood vents that blend in with the new floor. If you're installing high-stop wood flooring jobs, selling wood vents and registers along with the chore should be a given—nothing looks worse than an old metal vent installed on top of a gorgeous, brand-new wood floor.

In today's market, you can go vents in a wide range of sizes and species to match but well-nigh whatever chore, and they come prefinished and unfinished. In the following project, we show one like shooting fish in a barrel fashion to install a yellow birch vent into an unfinished solid 3/4 -inch xanthous birch floor using a standard template. As always, follow the recommendations of the manufacturer for the product you're using.

Supply List

Wood vent
Template
Pencil or pen
Router and fleck
Vacuum
Nail set
Hammer
Corner chisel or standard

Step one

First, locate where the duct was. Here nosotros had measured out from the patio door then nosotros would know where the duct was after the flooring installation. Now I use the frame of the vent to marking where I would similar the vent to be installed. If the duct were in a spot that left an awkward amount of a lath, for example, nosotros would have some flexibility to move the template—the vent doesn't accept to be perfectly centered over the duct.

Stride two

This vent didn't come with a template, simply you can usually buy one for standard vent sizes at your local forest floor distributor. This template comes with adhesive tabs that tin can be stuck onto the lesser of the template, keeping it in place one time you find the right spot for the template using the outline you lot made in the last pace.

Step 3

Since this is 3/4 -inch solid flooring, I'll demand at least 3 passes with the router, cutting no more one/4 inch at a time (harder forest may require more than passes removing less wood). The bit I use has a top guide begetting that allows me to cutting out the surface area I need while running against the edge of the template. If y'all don't have this bit, ask your local wood flooring distributor. Hither, I've adjusted the depth of the router and then it cuts the get-go ane/four inch of the woods flooring.

Step iv

Now I go in a clockwise movement to brand my get-go cut with the router.

Step 5

Vacuuming between every cut is of import to make sure you get a good, clean cutting.

Stride 6

My laissez passer with the router revealed the elevation of a fastener, so I utilise a nail fix to punch the fastener downward and out of the way.

Stride 7

Now I adjust the router to cut some other 1/4 inch so information technology'south cutting to a depth of 1/two inch of the woods floor. Then, I make another pass—always going clockwise—and vacuum. Finally, I suit the depth of the router to cut the full iii/4 inch, make my last pass and vacuum the flooring again.

Step viii

With the full depth of the flooring cutting, I remove the wood flooring where the vent will go.

Pace 9

The router tin can't cut into right angles on the template, and then I apply a corner chisel to knock out the corners for the vent. If I didn't take a corner chisel, I could as well but use a chisel and hammer.

Pace 10

I gently use the handle of my hammer (I could besides use a block of forest) to persuade the vent frame into the infinite for a dry fit.

Footstep eleven

If necessary, you can shim and glue the frame so it'southward flush with the floor (you can see that this one is sitting a little depression and needs to exist shimmed). Then, toenail the frame and set the nails, and you're ready for sanding and finishing (the vent will sit down loose inside the frame so it tin be easily removed for cleaning).