We purchase strand bamboo flooring, which is a click-lock system floating floor. We have a sunken living room, and purchased the stair-nose molding that matches from the manufacturer. The molding is tongue & groove. How to install?

It is a heavy-traffic area so we are concerned about any glue holding if we are only gluing in the groove...? And if glue is the way to go, what product would be the best?

Thank you for your ideas!!!

No glue! The click type floating floors need to have a little expansion and contraction room. Your stair-nosed molding (or whatever you choose to use as an edge into the sunken portion of the room) needs to overlap the floating floor by about 1/2". This will allow the floating floor to move without exposing any edges.

I don't think you understand my meaning. The flooring product clicks together like laminate or engineered hardwood. We special ordered the stair molding to match and it doesn't click to the next row of planks., it only has a groove. Like tongue & groove hardwood flooring. It doesn't overlap but it also doesn't attach. The tongue of the flooring plank does slide into the groove of the molding, and it fits flush like the rest. So how do we make it stay together? The only way i can see is if we glue the molding to the next row of plank. I don't mean to the subfloor because I get that it needs to float.... is that a better explanation?

I just reread your post and i think I need to clarify: I am talking about above the living room floor, not IN the sunken living room...
Thanks again for any ideas.

Pretty sure that I understand what's going on. Some basics:

1. Any flooring that is used as a stair molding (like the top tread or molding that will overlap the sunken portion of the room) will need to be attached to the subfloor. This could be via glue, face nails, screwed from underneath or a combination of the above. Basically any piece that is used as an 'end' of the flooring in this manner needs to e fixed, not floating.

2. Just because you have the same basic material for your nosing as your floating floor does not mean that they are meant to go together. Many flooring companies will sell the same finish in different products - engineered floating, T&G etc. I don't know of any flooring manufacturer who sells a nosing piece of any size to be used with floating flooring.

3. That doesn't mean that you are out of luck, just that you will have to modify the nosing piece that you have. As in the last post, what you need to end up with is a fixed nosing piece that has a deep enough groove cut in it so that the floating floor fits underneath it and had about 1/2" of space to move. So it you have 1/2" floating floor and a 3/4" nosing piece you can rabbet out a 1/2" groove - leaving 1/4" of the nosing to overlap the flooring.

Ahhhhh, I get it now! It was I that was misunderstanding you. And I was stuck on the molding having to be floating- THANK YOU!

Thank you Joe - A picture IS worth a thousand words.

I just hate the ones like Pergo sells to do this.
There nothing but peel and stick shelving paper looking stuff over a dece foam and also tend to crack where the right angle is.