Remodeling - Installing Laminate Floor

By Josh Reighley on January 25, 2007 4:18 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

We did a little remodeling job last weekend. We have a family room that has been used quite hard by our children. the carpet was stained with 3 or 4 years worth of apple juice and the like.

We recently refinanced our house, and for the first time in a long time we are not absolutely broke. We spend the majority of our time in the room, so I figured that would be the room we should improve.

We shopped around for quite a while, and finally settled on some laminate flooring at the Habitat for Humanity Surplus store. That store is quite neat, as it has a lot of new and used home improvement stuff at very reasonable prices. They happened to have 300 sq feet of flooring, and our room is 300 square feet minus a few here and there for a tile floor and stairs. The price was pretty low, but probably not unbeatable.

Friday, Andee and I moved the furniture out of that room. Saturday morning, we tore out the carpet and removed all of the moldings. Destruction always seems to be a quick job for one reason or another. Within an hour or two, we had a bare concrete floor and an empty room to work with.

My Dad and my friend Dean came over and worked all weekend to help me get the job done. For the most part, Dean and I did the repetitions and tedious parts and Dad did the math intensive cutting parts.

Our flooring was the tongue and groove glue together kind. Each piece would have it's tongue coated with a elmer's like glue, and they you would tap the tongue into the groove of the neighboring boards until the glue seeped out the seams.

It goes together pretty quickly once you get going. There where two agrevating things that we encountered during our project. The first was gaps between the planks. I think that most of these where caused by irregularies in the surface of our floor. Some may have also been caused by irregular boards, but I am not sure. For a long time we tried pounding these cracks out of the floor. This didn't work. Often our pounding would twist the boards that we where sliding our board into, and we would wind up chasing the cracks around. Other times we could get rid of most of the crack but the outside edges wouldn't be flush, so we would have the same problem when we installed the next row. Finally we figured out that it was best to let the cracks fall where they are, and to focus on keeping the outside edges flush with one another.

The second issue that was annoying was needing too short of a board at the very end. Usually yous stagger the seams a little bit, using a full length board in one row, a 1/3 length board in the next row, and a 2/3 length board in the next, then starting the pattern again. On one of our rows, we found that the 2/3 length board, plus 4 full length board left about 2 inches worth that needed to be filled at the end. We had to learn to pre-measure and make sure that that didn't happen again whenever the room changed shape.

After the floor was together we found that the crack filler stuff works quite well at hiding the imperfections.

We spent all day Saturday, and all of Sunday afternoon on the project, and it was pretty well complete by 6PM.

Another thing to keep in mind when shopping for laminate flooring, the moldings and trim are probably the most expensive part. Be sure to keep this in mind when you are estimating your costs.

The floor looks nice, and I believe it will be a lot more resistant to staining!

Comments

We did a little remodeling job last weekend. We have a family room that has been used quite hard by our children. the carpet was stained with 3 or 4 years worth of apple juice and the like. We recently refinanced our house, and for the first time in a long time we are not absolutely broke. We spend the majority of our time in the room, so I figured that would be the room we should improve. We shopped around for quite a while, and finally settled on some laminate flooring at the Habitat for Humanity Surplus store. That store is quite neat, as it has a lot of new and used home improvement stuff at very reasonable prices. They happened to have 300 sq feet of flooring, and our room is 300 square feet minus a few here and there for a tile floor and stairs. The price was pretty low, but probably not unbeatable. Friday, Andee and I moved the furniture out of that room. Saturday morning, we tore out the carpet and removed all of the moldings. Destruction always seems to be a quick job for one reason or another. Within an hour or two, we had a bare concrete floor and an empty room to work with. My Dad and my friend Dean came over and worked all weekend to help me get the job done. For the most part, Dean and I did the repetitions and tedious parts and Dad did the math intensive cutting parts. Our flooring was the tongue and groove glue together kind. Each piece would have it's tongue coated with a elmer's like glue, and they you would tap the tongue into the groove of the neighboring boards until the glue seeped out the seams. It goes together pretty quickly once you get going. There where two agrevating things that we encountered during our project. The first was gaps between the planks. I think that most of these where caused by irregularies in the surface of our floor. Some may have also been caused by irregular boards, but I am not sure. For a long time we tried pounding these cracks out of the floor. This didn't work. Often our pounding would twist the boards that we where sliding our board into, and we would wind up chasing the cracks around. Other times we could get rid of most of the crack but the outside edges wouldn't be flush, so we would have the same problem when we installed the next row. Finally we figured out that it was best to let the cracks fall where they are, and to focus on keeping the outside edges flush with one another. The second issue that was annoying was needing too short of a board at the very end. Usually yous stagger the seams a little bit, using a full length board in one row, a 1/3 length board in the next row, and a 2/3 length board in the next, then starting the pattern again. On one of our rows, we found that the 2/3 length board, plus 4 full length board left about 2 inches worth that needed to be filled at the end. We had to learn to pre-measure and make sure that that didn't happen again whenever the room changed shape. After the floor was together we found that the crack filler stuff works quite well at hiding the imperfections. We spent all day Saturday, and all of Sunday afternoon on the project, and it was pretty well complete by 6PM. Another thing to keep in mind when shopping for laminate flooring, the moldings and trim are probably the most expensive part. Be sure to keep this in mind when you are estimating your costs. The floor looks nice, and I believe it will be a lot more resistant to staining!