It's coming time to add the laminate flooring to the basement re-do, and to add some variety and design appeal to the family rooms section, I thought about the possibility of mixing shades of laminate flooring. Kind of like the wood floor inlays in old houses, but nowhere near that overboard since I'm no craftsman and, well, it's a basement. It would be more along the lines of using a maple shade as a border and a medium oak/mahogany shade as a main area color.
Anyone seen any examples of this in their surfing travels they can point to?
First, congratulations on what can be a great idea to easily add character to the room. Now, tread carefully. Proper planning is critical.
Working with Pergo (Pergo Premium, I think it was, from Home Depot), I did this kind of a project in my basement, which is about 500 square feet, mostly rectangular (say 16' by 28' but with an additional rectangular section along one of the long axes).
Anyway, I wanted most of the floor to be Alpine Beech (very blond wood grain, in 20 x 60 cm sections) but with a perimeter made out of square Pergo stone-style tiles. This is the glued pergo, not the snap-together stuff.
End result: it looks awesome, and now almost three years later I still love it and smile with pride every time I enter the room.
The long story: Oh, boy did I screw up this job. Poor planning turned an easy ~3 day job into 5 days days of hell. The normal way of laying the 20x60 sections (I'll call them planks) is to stagger them so that the seams don't line up. This adds strength to the floor. So, at the edges in the long dimension, you cut the planks down so that each successive row is staggered by 20 cm. Normally, this is an easy process and if you are off by a few millimeters, no big deal. It gets covered by trim at the wall edges. But, when the perimeter is made from the square tiles, the staggered edges of the planks are now visible!
I planned for this, and had a router bit that would allow me to cut the needed groove in the stagger-cut edges, and I bought extra tongues so that I could connect it all together. But I didn't plan on how difficult it would be to get the cuts EXACTLY right at the far edge of the floor, so that they would line up for the perimeter on that side.
So, my big mistake was that doing the perimeter all around the inset beech woodgrain was a mistake. I should have done it just along the long sides, so that no precision cuts would not have been needed for staggering the planks. Getting those cuts JUST RIGHT, and then having to rout out the groove added days to the job.
But, I kept at it and got pretty darn good at it by the end. When I fit in the last small piece, and later removed all the clamps from my new floor, and dry-broomed it clean, the feeling of pride was immeasurable. Several pros have been in since then and given me great feedback, though one of them asked me what I learned in doing the floor and smiled knowledgeably when I told him my story.
Wow, Marc. Thanks for the input. It's always interesting to have even more stuff to think about than you prviously thought you'd have to think about ;)
Anyway, one question for you since your situation is kinda close to mine in that I'm also looking to have a perimeter edge to deal with: How or why did stagger-cutting be/become an issue when dealing with your perimeter matierial?
In my scenario (and I'll be using the snap-together lam, not glue-down Pergo stuff), my other-color perimeter lam will be much like your tile. At this point (and then again, I might be missing something in my ignorance) for the section of border that travels left to right, I thought I'd just cut the individual "planks" (leaving the tongue exposed so the other/main-color "planks" will snap onto them) to a length that matches the width of the individual "planks" the run in the up and down direction for the other 2 walls. So in essence, those border-color "planks" will be the base off which the main-color planks will work off.
I understand completely the idea that planks should be stagger-cut so the seams don't line up so you get a stronger floor. But for the life of me, I can't envision what you did along the edge of your Pergo "tile" border that helped along the stagger-cut idea where tongue meets groove at the other end of the "plank." I mean, if you have a set of tiles with a uniform edge running along your room perimeter, all your lam floor "planks" will just end up being straight-cut to be flush to your tiles, no?
Or maybe I'll be like everyone else and see the light when I'm actually doing it ;)
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