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!

Installing a Laminate Floor - Part II: Installing the Floor

If you haven't read Part I: Demolition & Underlay yet, click here.

Now that the underlay is in place, you are ready to start laying the floor. Start by laying out the first row along one wall, and the row that will run lengthwise down the centre of the room. You'll take these rows up again, but for now the point is to make sure that the centre row looks straight (your room may not be square, especially if you have an older house like we do), and to check that you won't end up with a row that is too narrow along either of the side walls. As far as the latter point goes, you have two options. You can either start your flooring in the left hand corner (advantage: you only have to make lenthwise cuts to your flooring along one wall), or you can start it in the centre and make the space between the last row on each side and the side walls equal (this means you will probably have to cut the boards along both side walls - probably not worth the effort unless you would otherwise end up with a very thin strip along one side). 

As you can see here, we decided to start the flooring in the left corner.

Not sure which direction to lay your flooring in? For us, it came down to wanting your new floor to run the same direction of the existing hardwood on the second floor. For you it might be helpful to know that usually floors are laid lengthwise parallel to the longest wall of the room, or they are laid perpendicular to the window.

Now for the things that I'm glad I knew before I started, and the things that I wish I had known before I started. My Aunt Lori, an accomplished DIYer who has laid more than her fair share of floors recommended a few things, and I will pass along her advice. 

First, the floor manufacturer will recommend leaving a space for expansion between your new floor and any fixed object (i.e. wall, pipe, etc) of 1/4" to 3/8" (0.5 to 1cm), you should really leave a smaller space. That space should be equal to half of the depth of your baseboards. Planning to leave a smaller space will also leave more room for error when you make your cuts. I found that used (or unused) paint stir sticks and the metre stick that I had on hand were about the right depth, and they were easy to lie on their sides between the floor and the wall.

Second, Lori recommended that although we have a (very old, second hand, straight from the '50s) circular saw, we should invest in a mitre saw (aka chop saw) for this project. We decided that it was worth it for $130, since it would make this job much easier, and would likely come in handy for future projects. In retrospect, we're glad that we got a compound mitre saw with the 10" blade (instead of 7"), but we wish we had invested the extra $50 to get a compound sliding mitre saw. With a saw with a 10" blade that doesn't slide you can cut up to 10" deep, and about 6" across. The sliding feature enables you to cut further across, which is useful if your floor boards are 12" across, like ours are. In the end, we made one cut from each side and finished off the middle with a hand saw, which worked out fine.

Our new mitre saw, and James finishing a board with the hand saw.

Third, get a pull bar. This is a tool that you hook around the end of the last board in a row, so that you can hammer it into place. Ours came in a kit that also included 20 or so spacers (that you can use instead of those paint stir sticks I mentioned above), and a tapping block (to put against the other boards and hammer on when you're trying to get them into place--or you could just use a sanding block or other small block of leftover wood, which you surely have, right?).

Pull bar (red) in action!

Fourth, although the instructions that come with your flooring will tell you that your can fit the long side of each board into the one beside it, and then just slide it into place so that the short side meets nicely with the one next to it, this is not true. They only say this because they don't want to be responsible for any damage that you do to the boards when you're hammering on them to get them into place. 

Fortunately, I am not afraid that you're going to sue me, so I'm going to tell it like it is. You have two options. You can link a whole row of boards together, end to end, and then attach them to the previous row all at once. This is quick and a bit tricky, but not difficult especially with two people, unfortunately it is not effective for rows longer than 3 or maybe 4 boards. If you're working on a longer row, you can put the first 3 or 4 boards in place this way, and it will save you a lot of time over installing them all using option 2.

The first few rows were short, so we were able to lay them even without a 

pull bar or tapping block (which we didn't know we needed), using option 1.

Once you've put the first 3 or 4 boards in the new row in place using the above method, you will have to use your handy tapping block to get each subsequent board in place. Attach the long side to the previous row first, then hold your block on a diagonal against the end of the new board, and hit it with your hammer. If you have a friend helping you (recommended!), one of you can hammer, and the other one can monitor the gap between the new board and the row that you're adding to to make sure that you stop once the gap is closed. 

If you've read this far, you've earned a cute puppy picture!

If it seems like your hammering isn't doing anything, take the new board off and check to see if there's anything (like a little piece of the tongue or groove that has broken off) between the two boards that you're trying to attach that is preventing them from meeting completely. Usually you will find that there is. Remove the debris and try again.

With a little patience, a combination of these two methods should work pretty effectively.

Always lay out the whole row before you start fitting the boards together. If one end of your row is a very small piece, start with it instead of ending with it, because that way you can avoid using the pull bar on any piece that won't be hidden by the baseboards (it can leave a mark). 

If you read the instructions for your floor you probably know this already, but be sure to start with boards of different lengths, so that your floor doesn't end up looking like a checkerboard. You want the joins to be at different places, because this will make your floor more durable, and it will look better.

Next up, Part III - Finishing!

Installing a Laminate Floor - Part I: Demolition & Underlay

One of the first times that we came to the house after it was ours, we discovered that the floor in the guest room really needed some help (the previous owners had cleverly put a rug in that room so we wouldn't notice). It had stick-down vinyl tiles that must have been 30 years old, and were peeling up around the edges.

Before (notice the well-placed rug)

Now, for a demolition-lover like me, this was great news--it meant that tearing them up would be a breeze! Needless to say, I started ripping up tiles right away, because it was so much fun! I removed the baseboards (post on how to do this and how much I love my mini crow bar and my chisel coming soon), painted, and we ordered a new floor.

Demolition!

We decided to go with a floating laminate floor for a couple of reasons.

1) We didn't want to removed the black paper that was stuck to the sub-floor if we could avoid it, and the sub-floor doesn't have to be perfectly flat to put a laminate floor on top.

2) We can't afford real hardwood right now.

3) The rest of our second floor has real, old-fashioned hardwood floors, and we knew that it would be impossible to match the colour exactly (and also that if we tried the laminate would look so fake next to the real stuff). We also didn't like the idea of having two different colours of wood right next to each other. Using laminate gave us the largest number of colours and styles to choose from.

This is the floor that we chose is called Picolo Light Grey, and it looks like this:

Laying the Underlay

Once the old floor was torn up, the baseboards removed, and all the bits of the old floor removed from under the baseboards, I swept the floor and then vacuumed. I tore up any pieces of black paper that seemed loose.

We got a roll of the cheap underlay (since the room is on the second floor, we weren't worried about moisture, so we didn't see a need for the fancy stuff), and I laid it out on the floor with "This side up" facing up, and set out to cut it to fit the room.

Lay the underlay not only so that the writing is the same side up on each piece (i.e. facing the ceiling), but also so it's oriented the same way (i.e.top of all the letters towards the window). If you have the same kind of underlay that I did, the left edge of each piece will have a strip of thin plastic extending past the edge of the actual underlay by about 10cm (4 in). The right side of each piece will have a strip of tape, covered by a backing, about 5cm (2 in) from the edge. The idea is that you're supposed to butt the pieces of underlay up against one another, with the cellophane on top of the tape, remove the backing of the tape once it's all lined up, and stick the cellophane to the tape. That way your underlay won't slide around while you're laying the floor. It took me a while to figure out what the cellophane and tape strip were for, so hopefully now you won't have to!

See how the word "Roberts" is one way up in the first row, 

and the other way up in the next row. This is how not to do it.

Another trick that I discovered is that once you have the underlay lined up on three sides, you can use a utility knife or a pair of scissors to poke holes a foot or so apart along the underlay where the floor meets the wall. Then you can lift it up and cut to "connect the dots" to get an accurate line, even if your room isn't square.

With those two tips in mind, putting down the underlay is pretty easy.

Click here for Part II: Installing the Floor