Few flooring products are as gorgeous as wood laminate flooring. The fine striations of grain match so well with the interesting patterns of the thin pieces themselves and yield a somewhat complex but straightforward pattern of finely-meshed and superbly-crafted boards. This pattern is bound to warm a room up while providing a gorgeous hard surface.
The ironic thing about how “complex” things seem, however, is that it is not what it appears. It turns out almost anyone can install this attractive flooring, providing they adhere to the initial rules without varying. I have given some tips based on my experiences which can at worst give a few insights into the typical discomforts, both physically and aesthetically in the installation of laminate flooring.
These are just a few of the major encumbrances I have discovered, to my pain, in work I have done. There is much more one could advise, but these little tips can save you a ton of pain, later. Bear them in mind during your installations. I am positive you can add to these as time goes by and you enjoy your hard labors.
Those rules are:
Make sure the measurements of length are correct
There is nothing worse than finding out the moulding which will hide the ends of your laminate boards is not wide enough to cover their ends. Make certain by laying each out before every install that the set up is totally appropriate.
While it may be time-consuming, nothing will detract from the overall effect of your finished floor as bad as having some strange germ-collecting gap before the moulding.
This will also insure you have not somehow picked up the wrong pre-cut board, which of course would be doubly bad in that the one you opted for means it will not be used where it was intended either.
Get some knee pads
This might seem funny and unnecessary, but an $8 investment in knee pads will make your work go faster and much more reliably. Physical discomfort has ruined many a project. Your knees sitting naked on a floor, and especially a hardwood floor, are not engineered to take the constancy of bearing your shifting weight as you manipulate your body to position and install laminate flooring. Take it from one who knows. Work comfortably and safely and your project will not only be more fun to do, but will benefit from the attention not deflected away by physical pain.
Make sure the fits are snug
Laminate tongue and groove flooring is designed to interlock by virtue of the grooved edges painstakingly installed at the manufacturing level. However, this is not always done perfectly. It is the nature of wood to swell as it dries or to become somewhat deformed in shipping just owing to its natural qualities.
Some of your grooves will not fit as snugly as others, it is just a given. However, not fitting snugly had some nasty implications that can seriously affect some negative events later on. Make sure you pound the board in snugly with whatever soft-headed hammering device you use. If the fit is not immediately satisfying, take the time to analyze where and why. If need be, pull it out and use a sander or chisel away at the offending edge. Bear in mind, this part will not be visible later. The bottom line here is to make sure the fit is snug. There can be no compromises here.
Assess your work at intervals
Take a minute during the process at various times to analyze your progress so far and plan for the future of the installation. Simply grabbing boards and slapping them in might mean you are missing some flaw which will be a grave price to pay later, when you suddenly realize you’ll have to remove 50 boards to correct it.
It can be something as small as some object you left under the boards you installed which now pushes up and make a bulge in the overall surface. Any number of things can affect the overall look. Other typical problems are some place where your trailing leg or foot may have caused some separation between the boards. Analyze it all.
Take a “finisher’s’” perspective of seeing what you have done as a completed task. Does it meet professional criteria? Is it all “golden”? If it is, by all means congratulate yourself. Feeling good never hurt the productivity level of anyone I ever knew. So, make sure you feel good about your hard labors. It’s what built the countries, towns and homes we all live in.
Have fun and make sure you feel good! Inspiration and sweat are a great combination!