Laminate flooring in doorways/adjacent rooms

[news]

I am laying the same glueless laminate flooring in adjacent rooms, I understand that I need to use an expansion strip in the doorways.

In the first room I started in the opposite corner of the room working towards the door.

When I start on the next room should I continue from the doorway (i.e. continuing working in the same direction) or start on the opposite side from the door again where the longest straight wall is and work towards the door again ? (so that the flooring is laid in both rooms working towards the common door ?

Hope that makes some sense !

Frosty

P.S. Also, how important are the expansion strips, should I put one in the doorway of the built in larder too if I'm laying flooring in there too ?

[Lurch]

On 15 Sep 2005 16:06:03 -0700, [e-mail] scrawled:

Er, is the room a different size then depending which end you measure from? How's starting at a different end of the room going to make much of a difference? Or am I missing something?

Depends how big the rooms are and whether it needs some expansion in that area. If you've measured it out and there should be an expansion strip then fit one.

I overheard a bloke talking a while back and he was quite impressed with how he managed to get his laminate floor to fit perfectly up to the skirting all the way around the room, with none of these big gaps everywhere like everyone else has. Hmmm....

[DJC]

I wouldn't think it critical either way. I put down a floor then needed to take it up top do some plumbing, I only needed to take up half the floor, but that was the wrong half, so I ended up re-doing the lot; start where you are last likely to need access in future. Sometimes it is easier or neater to trim the last few boards on a particular side. Starting with the longest straight wall is probably best. Unless the boards look different when viewed from one side rather than the other it should not look any different where they meet at the door. Besides the threshold strip will separate the two runs.

May depend on how big the cupboard -- does it extend sideways further than the width of the door? -- in which case best use and expansion strip.

[Rob Morley]

Always start along the longest straightest wall. I'm not sure what difference you think that will make to expansion gaps.

Probably not needed if you're leaving a gap around the rest of the larder.

[Richard Conway]

If the floor has obvious joins (i.e. some laminates have a tongue and groove style groove) then you might want to make sure these match up on either side of the expansion strip so it looks like a continuous floor and flows nicer