I've recently laid laminate flooring on the lower (open-plan) floor of my house, which I'm very pleased with. I need to cover the expansion gap around the walls, but I'm not too keen on paying over £3.50 per 2m strip which B&Q charge (especially as I need about 30m of it).
Is there anywhere cheaper I could get some? The floor is beech coloured. I know wooden quadrant would be cheaper, but I lso need to factor in the hassle of varnishing and trying to match the colour to the floor.
Yes, you cover it with the skirting board which you removed before laying the flooring!
So you didn't remove the skirting? If this is the case, there isn't a solution which looks half-way decent. The best bodge is probably to fill the gap with cork strip which will compress as the flooring expands.
Depending on the gap you've left, you can fill the gap with a matching silicone sealant. Or do what a friend has just, and use a wood effect tile edging strip which came on a long roll of 10 mtrs (?) I think. It cost him around £10 per roll, but it looks really great.
My neighbour had the exact same dilemma. He used a section froom B&Q that cost £0.90 a metre. It looks much better than the quadrant stuff. He stained it to the same colur as the flooring. The profile was concaved quadrant - not sure of the correct name. Neil
Actually its not as hard as it sounds. I finally got artound to installing oak skirting over my oak laminate, and beliebve it or not I have oak beams - somewhat rough - stained with teh same stain as teh dors and skirtings and door frames, plus a bressemer beam in a mixture of stain and linseed oil and roof beams in stain and linseed, and Kahrs flooring in wheyever 'oiled finsih' they use.
The BEST mastch is between the kahrs unkown oil and the stained skirting.
The kahrs itself is ageing a sort of golden color, except where the puppy pissed on it, which has produced a lovely dark coloration in te grain. The linseed on sanded oak is going russet, whlst the rough sawn oak is much darker.
What am I trying to say here?
(i) Wood is wood, and trying to get perfect matches should be reserved for plastic laminate manufacturers
(ii) It all ages and changes colour anyway, so just use what looks decent, stain it up approximately correctly, and sit back and watch the 'patina' so beloved of the Antique Roadshow to develop...
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