Hey folks,

I am planning a custom parquet floor which I will be installing as a
christmas gift for my mother. It's going to go in an L-shaped hallway,
and will be composed of a continuous outer band of quarter sawn white
oak, then a border composed of cherry diamonds (square shaped) in a
field of hard maple, another band of white oak, then a field with a
basket-weave white oak grid filled with triangular hard maple pieces,
each square finished with a small square of cherry in the middle. I'm
confident in my ability to build it, if I could only lay it out in a way
that works. The problem I'm having is in figuring out the size and
spacing of the diamonds in the border. I need to figure out a size where
all the diamonds will be equal in size and meet up in a continuous band
with no gaps or partial pieces. This is greatly complicated by the shape
of the room:

_______________________
| 62" (2) |
| |
|79" (1) 55"|
| (8)|
| |
| -------------------------------------
| 111" (7) |
| 35"|
| 39" (3) (6) |
---------------- 134" (5) |
step |9"_(4)_____________________________________|

(Sorry for the questionable ascii art

The outer border will be used to correct for the space not being square
at the corners. I am currently assuming that a 3" border will be
sufficient to achieve this, so the dimensions for calculating the border
are as follows (after subtracting 2x3 from sides 1,2,5 and 6), where x
is the width of the border (also the size of a "square" of the border,
which I currently don't know, and is what I'm trying to find out):

(1) 73"
(2) 56"
(3) 39+x"
(4) 9+x"
(5) 128"
(6) 29"
(7) 111+x"
(8) 55+x"

So basically I need to solve for x and, being a dunce at math, I have no
idea how to do so. Any mathmeticians or engineers out there looking for
a challenge? Seriously though, I'm sure there has to be a formula for
doing this. While I'm at it, I might as well also ask if there's a
formula to figure out the optimal size for the squares within the field.
Could be the same formula, I have no idea Any help would be greatly
appreciated! Thanks a lot folks!

-AD