Laminated flooring help please

[Alan]

Hi, I have decidied and bought a pack of laminated flooring to do our small bathroom. Could I please have some tips on laying it. I have bought a roll of the foam underlay which I presume I just cut to size and put underneath? the pack says overlap by 30cm so hopefully thats easy enough.

I am puzzled with the pack of floor wedges that I got. How do I use these or do I need them?

Do I lay the flooring llike bricks ie. space the joints?

Finally does the flooring fit exactly from wall to wall or do I leave a small gap for expansion.

Thanks for any help.

[Tim S]

Yes - it's worth stapling or taping the edges down so it won't go walkies when you are laying the boards.

the pack says overlap by 30cm so hopefully thats easy enough.

My roll of foam didn't say so and I didn't. I would have thought that the overlap would have caused some uneveness despite the fact its compressible. However, the manufacturer said do it, so best to go with the instructions in your case - might be a different foam to the one I used...

Possibly it's intended to act as a damp barrier whereas I used a seperate poly sheet for that.

They help a lot.

Take two, put sloping faces together, now you have two parallel faces, the depth of which can be adjusted by sliding the wedges together or apart.

You use these around the edge at about 2 foot intervals to hold the board off the wall (you need a gap all round or disaster will strike when it expands due to heat, and it does). Adjust each one with fingers until teh desired gap is achieved and the board is supported firmly. Now you can tap more boards onto the working edge without the previous ones wandering off.

Yes - exactly. Even overlaps. There is a lot of flexibility about the end-joints. Overlapping by 1/2 or 1/3 with the neighbouring boards will make it rigid. Whether you aim to line up the end joints every 2nd or 3rd board is upto you. The joints do become a feature, and "random" may or may not look as good a dead regular depending on the pattern. Lay a few in the middle of the room dry (no glue) and see how it looks.

See above - the gap is essential or, with the slightest heat the floor will buckle.

If you search this group with google there are some quite detailed explanations in old posts by various people including me.

Here's a useful hint - like wallpaper, plan ahead before laying the first board. It's bad to have to lay a strip 2cm wide because you started all wrong - better to have 2 half width boards on either side of the room rather than 1 full and 1 sliver.

I recommend an offset hand saw for undercutting the door architrave - then the laminate slides under without any fiddly wibbly gaps. Looks neater and much easier to do. You may have to take 1/2-1cm off the bottom of your door(s) too - you can check in advance. I used a powerplane, but check for nails. I didn't and chipped me blade.

HTH

Tim

[Mary Fisher]

I interpret that as overlapping the boards 30cm from the joins in the underlay.

Mary

[Tim S]

Yes, that makes more sense - the golden rule of laminate flooring: Never ever line the joints up; horizontally, vertically or any other way ;->

Tim

[Alan]

Thanks for that, a couple of other things I have thought of....

1) There is a couple of uneven floorboards (remember this is only a small bathroom so I have to negotiate around the pot!!) should I just plane them till they're resonably level. Please don't say take them up and refit, it's beyond me..... 2) Should I be laying the laminate floor strips the same way as the floorboards are running ? 3) How will I ever get the bath panel off should I need too when the floor is going to be higher than the bottom of the panel?

Thanks again

[S Viemeister]

Lay them at right angles to the boards - particularly important if they're not as level as they should be.

[kenknott]

Most laminate flooring doesn't like excess water! It absorbs it and swells. I assume you have bought waterproof flooring suitable for a bathroom.

[Tim S]

Yep - plane them down a bit. You could use that green fibreboard underlay for laminate as well as the foam. It will give it a bit more tolerence.

It doesn't have to be perfect, just near perfect. A few mm in the metre lumpiness is OK, but 1cm isn't as I found with my not-very-flat chipboard floor. I packed an area by the door that had suffered compaction out with high density stationers card. I would have perhaps used latex levelling gunk, but I found out after I laid the boards - bl**dy Ideal Homes cr*p flats. Worked out fine in the end though.

Trim the panel?

Tim

[Tim S]

- yes you said bathroom, so adding a fibre sponge wasn;t such a bright idea . Use a second sheet of the foam if needs be. Probably not recommended as such but I had to in my hall - did the job OK.

Tim