At some point a previous owner installed hardwood flooring in my house. Nice. They did not however make a hole for the front entryway heating vent. The duct and duct outlet exists in the crawlspace and now I would like to put the vent there. My floors are hickory and all the other floor vents are "flush mount".
I can easily find the vent location in the floor, by drilling up at the four corners of the duct vent outlet in the crawlspace below. I bought the appropriate sized hickory flush mount vent but now realize that I need to cut an awfully straight line, in order to flush mount this cleanly in the floor.
How do I do this?
So that the vent will look right, the cuts need to be exact, straight and the corners square. There are at least these problems:
1) One cut needs to be close to the wall, within 2 inches. This makes it difficult to get a guide or even a cutting tool in there. I can remove the quarter round kick molding, and the other molding behind that off, for a little more space, but that doesn't make that much extra space. It would be a little problematic to remove the main molding.
2) The corners of the cuts need to be square and not extend into the surrounding floor. Hand cut the corners, maybe?!
Somewhat related: Is it possible to install flush mount floor vents in a laminate wood floor?
Best Answer
As Keshlam commented (hence this answer is community wiki), An oscillating multitool is a good choice. You can probably rent one if you don't want to buy one. I would practice on some scrap wood.