Fitting Laminate With Offset Walls

[L Reid]

I'm about to embark on installing some veneered Wickes flooring, and wanted some opinions on how best to proceed.

One of the walls in the room I'm installing the laminate is at an angle (about 20 deg or so). Across the width of the room that means we gain almost

1m's extra length at the longer wall. The wall that is angled is going to be getting a new stove and hearth installed on it in a couple of weeks, but FIL (Father in law) is keen to make a start with laying the boards this weekend.

The room looks something like this :

/ Window \ _________/ \____________________ | \ | _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ \ | \ | _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ \ | \ | _ ==== | | Chimney | ¬ ==== = \ Door \ = \ L__________________________________________________\

Hopefully that looks OK and not the usual ASCII drawing garbled mess. The square bit in front of the chimney is the hearth for the stove. Dotted line is direction of existing floorboards.

Now to the questions:

Q1 - what's the best end to start laying the flooring from?

Q2 - FIL wants to lay flooring where hearth is going to go and have hearth placed on top of flooring. I've found out the hearth needs to be cemented and would prefer it to go directly on top of the old slab of concrete in the floor that would have been the old base for the fire. Neatness (no beading round flooring at hearth / less hastle when fitting) is FIL's reason for doing this. I'd prefer to fit flooring round the hearth but am unsure of the possible problems with either approach.

Q3 - Any 'dos and don'ts of laying this type of flooring? For anyone with a Wickes catalogue, it's the Oak Veneer stuff at about £17 sq/m. Click together one rather than the glue one.

Thanks for any replies!

Leigh

[L Reid]

ASCII garbled mess, so second time lucky with the diagram... If this goes wrong again I might just draw it!

I'm about to embark on installing some veneered Wickes flooring, and wanted some opinions on how best to proceed.

One of the walls in the room I'm installing the laminate is at an angle (about 20 deg or so). Across the width of the room that means we gain almost

1m's extra length at the longer wall. The wall that is angled is going to be getting a new stove and hearth installed on it in a couple of weeks, but FIL (Father in law) is keen to make a start with laying the boards this weekend.

The room looks something like this :

_______/Window\____________ | \ | _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ \ | \ | _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ \ | \ | _ ==== | | Chimney | ¬ ==== = \ Door \ = \ L__________________________________\

Hopefully that looks OK and not the usual ASCII drawing garbled mess. The square bit in front of the chimney is the hearth for the stove. Dotted line is direction of existing floorboards.

Now to the questions:

Q1 - what's the best end to start laying the flooring from?

Q2 - FIL wants to lay flooring where hearth is going to go and have hearth placed on top of flooring. I've found out the hearth needs to be cemented and would prefer it to go directly on top of the old slab of concrete in the floor that would have been the old base for the fire. Neatness (no beading round flooring at hearth / less hastle when fitting) is FIL's reason for doing this. I'd prefer to fit flooring round the hearth but am unsure of the possible problems with either approach.

Q3 - Any 'dos and don'ts of laying this type of flooring? For anyone with a Wickes catalogue, it's the Oak Veneer stuff at about £17 sq/m. Click together one rather than the glue one.

Thanks for any replies!

Leigh

[Roger Mills]

Don't lay it parallel with or perpendicular to the 20 degree wall - because it will then be out of square with 3 of the 4 walls, and will look horrible.

Don't lay it under the hearth - because it needs to float, and can't do so if there's a fixed object on top of it. Anyway, the hearth needs to be on a solid floor. You'll need to leave an expansion gap round the hearth - which you can cover with an L section hardwood threshold strip - mitred at the corners - or possibly not cover it but use a cork infill strip.

If I were doing it, I would prefer to lay it parallel to your longest wall (the bottom horizontal line on your diagram), and start laying from that wall. However, unless the floorboards are particularly good, it may be better to lay it at right angles to the boards - in which case I would start from the wall with the door in it.

Try to work out exactly where all the joins are going to come before you start laying. You may need to start with less than a full width to avoid having any very narrow bits on the other side of the room - although the angle may eliminate this risk.

Thinking again about the angle, it would be much easier to cut the ends of the boards off at an angle rather than the long sides - which again mitigates in favour of laying them parallel to the floorboards if you can.

HTH, Roger

[L Reid]

My thinking too. Thanks!

Floor isn't ideal, however I could probably either fix hardboard down, or give 'em a sanding to level 'em. I was thinking the floor should start at either the chimney or door as I thought it was meant to be perpendicular to the light source? Underlay will be the feltboard stuff if that makes any difference.

Cheers!

Leigh

[Bob Mannix]

Agreed

I a man as we speak laying flooring in my house round the new hearth (I'm replying to the post so I don't have to be DIYing it :o) ). He was absolutely definite that you start at the hearth. This is the focal point of the room and, if by the time you get to it having started somewhere else the plank lines are not parallel/at right angles to the edge of the hearth it will look crap.

Hold off until the hearth is there!

[L Reid]

Oh-oh. This could be interesting then as the hearth will be square to the wall it's on (i.e. the angled wall). Therefore for the laminate to be parallell to the hearth, it'd need to be parallell to the offset wall (which means the laminate would be at an angle at all the other walls). Which we probably don't want to do.

On the plus (?) side, my wife phoned Wickes today to ask about the remaining flooring we'd ordered last Saturday (that was ordered and 'coming in' on Tuesday). It's apparently not in, "as the warehouse don't send it out if they don't have it", but it's "ordered and coming in on Saturday". The question about what happens if the warehouse still don't have it was met with a chuckle along with the comment that we've already paid for it. I'll be phoning to ask what their refund policy is if I have to rip up the stuff I fit on Saturday if they don't ever get the rest in.

Now off to size some sash and mortice locks for our doors...

Leigh

[Bob Mannix]

[Bob Mannix]

Actually I didn't as I hit the wrong button :o(

Ah, sorry for not viewing your ASCII art properly. I guess it wants to be parallel to the longest "straight" wall then. You still want the hearth down first though, firstly for the reasons already stated and second becaues you are bound to drop it on the new floor if that's in first!

[L Reid]

Don't blame you if you saw the 1st attempt!

Probably the best way would be to lay in same direction of existing floor boards (which would be parallel to longest wall) which is the wall opposite the window. I'm seriously thinking of holding off for now, even if it's just to make sure Wickes do manage to supply the rest of my floor before I start!

Leigh