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Friday, May 18, 2012

Installing a Laminate Floor - Part III: Finishing!

In case you haven't read them yet, you can click here to read Part I: Demolition & Underlay or Part II: Installing the Floor (where I tell you all the things I wish I had known before we started). In this post I will tell you about some things that didn't go as planned.

So we began laying the floor, and the first challenge was that the boards didn't actually fit together the way that they were supposed to according to the directions that came with the flooring. We were supposed to connect the long side to the previous row, and then just slide the board along and it would snap into place next to the previous board in the same row. Not so, as we discovered.

We solved this problem (as I mentioned in Part II), by linking a whole row of boards together end to end and then attaching them to the previous row all at once. This worked great, until we got to the longer rows that went into the closet. Ultimately we needed to get a pull bar and a tapping block so we could hammer the boards into place effectively. Installing the floor might have been a one day job instead of a two day project if we had known this in advance (or maybe not).

As we worked our way towards the closet, we discovered that since our new floor is taller than the old vinyl tiles, the closet door would not open or close on top of them. In fact, it wouldn't travel over them at all--they blocked the door.

My solution? Take the door off the hinges and worry about it later. Fortunately, James found a really helpful video about how to trim the bottom off of a door online. You can expect a post about that project soon. But for now, no door.

We also had to improvise a bit when it came to installing the "transition strip" that connects the new floor to the floor in the hallway. Instead of using their fancy method of nailing down a little plastic groove for the strip to slide into, we just nailed down the strip itself. Since it's now firmly affixed to the floor, I call that a success.

Here are a few photos of the finished room:




If you really love it, you can stay here, since we'll be renting this room out through AirBnB!





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