Lovely looking flooring but can be a pain to fit (Laminate Flooring)

Member Name: BumpyBump

Product:	Laminate Flooring
Date:	19/10/09 (154 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: If you pay a bit more then you can have flooing that looks like real wood and is hard-wearing

Disadvantages: Can be quite expensive if you opt for some nicer-looking stuff, and can be a massive pain to fit.

Laminate flooring is an engineered hard flooring designed to look and feel like real wood. It comes in planks about 25-30cm wide, about 150cm long and about 6mm deep. Most laminate has a click system whereby you should be able to simply click the planks together, however some laminate requires glue. Costs can vary widely depending on the type of laminate you want and its appearance, however you should expect to pay at least £8 per square metre (I paid £17 per metre square which tells you how much it can cost)

Last month I decided to put a laminate down in my hallway. I have been a big fan of laminate in the past, although I have never lived with it, and always admire it in other peoples' homes. I decided that as I was putting the laminate in the hallway, where there is no furniture to break it up, that I should choose a more expensive type of laminate that actually looked like wood, because I'm not so keen on laminate when it actually looks like laminate. I opted for Homebase's Country Hornbeam and I got round to laying it last week. Now, having never laid laminate flooring before I swotted up rather a lot on 'how to' guides. I saw loads of videos and visiting lots of 'expert' websites. I also picked up the Laminate Guide from Homebase. Everyone claimed it was one of the easiest DIY jobs you can do. I have to say that I really disagree. I suppose my first problem was that I was putting it in an odd-shaped hall, where I also have 6 doorways to contend with. I can imagine that it probably is a vast deal easier if you're doing it in a square room with just one doorway.

Laminate flooring expands and contracts depending on the temperature, so you can't lay it flush against the wall. Therefore the first thing you have to decide befiore laying laminate is whether or not you're going to lay it under the skirting boards or next to the skirting board, leaving an expansion gap. Laying it under the skirting is more aesthetically pleasing as you don't have to put loads of beading (thin laminate strips) over the expansion gaps. I opted to lay it under the skirting boards and attempted to pull some of the skirting off. This proved to be a huge mistake as the thing all came off in bits and it became apparent that I'd be there all day trying to get it off and would then have to spend money and time buying and fitting totally new skirting. So I quickly decided to abandon that plan and to lay it next to the skirting and to just fit the beading.

The second thing you have to decide is what underlay you're going to use. There are different ones available, but for my purposes (wooden floorboards with another flat directly underneath me) I used the thickest one I could find, just to try to minimise noise levels. Floors should be completely flat before fitting the underlay so nails will have to be thoroughly banged in (or rmeoved) and loose floorboards will have to be csrewed down. Laying the underlay was really easy - literally just hacking it into the right size and shape with a pair of scissors and then sticking it all together with some masking tape. If you are laying on a concrete floor then you will need to lay a damp-proof membrane as well, or buy underlay with it built in.

Then you have to worry about how to fit the laminate around the doorways. The recommendation is that you actually remove the bottom of the architraves so the laminate can slide underneath it. All round this is cosmetically the best thing to do so you dno't end up trying to fit little bits of beading round the architrave. I was concerned about doing this as it looked quite difficult, but it was actually dead easy and I managed to get all 6 architraves trimmed down in no time. It is also worth mentioning here that you also need to consider any doors that will swing over the laminate itself. I didn't consider it beforehand and found, after I'd laid the floor, that I couldn't close one of the doors. You have to do some measuring and take some off the bottom of any affected doors. But this is ok as long as you measure up ok and can cope with removing and re-hanging doors.

Now then...on with the laying! It all starts off easily enough. The first plank goes down no problem! Then you put down the next one and there's no problem there either as they 'click' together. The problems start when you start to lay your fourth or fifth plank. At this point they decide that they're not going to click in place any more, and there is always a gap at one end or the other of the plank you're laying - giving the feeling that the boards were warped. This nearly drove me potty until my friend suggested simply hammering them in. And it worked! So that was the way forward from then on, hammering in plank after plank. There is a lot of measuring and sawing involved (do not attempt this without a jig saw or you will regret it) but most of it is manageable. The doorways were a complete nightmare and I was glad when we managed to get them done. They don't look very professional, but they're not bad for a first attempt and a bit of beading will cover the worst bits.

The thing I had issues with was how big the expansion gap should be (you have to leave a gap all the way round because the laminate expands in warm weather). The instructions said to leave 12mm each side but that seemed like a huge amount to me and my hall is only about a metre wide. I was also wondering how much the laminate had already contracted on the day I was laying it (it was pretty cold) - did I need to leave a larger gap because the laminate could only get bigger? Similarly, if laying it on a boiling hot day, should the expansion gap be non-existent because it's already grown as big as it can? It is a bit of a minefield, but in the end I decided to split the difference and leave a 5/6mm gap all the way round and I'll have to just see how that goes come summer time.

A six metre square hallway took me a good two days (and one of the days I was assisted by a friend) including preparation time. Having done it once I would certainly have no qualms about attempting another room, although I don't think I would attempt another hallway in a hurry. The result looks amazing - it really does look like a real wood floor. The cats love it and it's easy to keep clean. The only thing I would say is that I now make a right racket when I walk about with shoes on, but that's only to be expected. It can also be scratched easily with grit, so you need to sweep up quite regularly, but the cats have had a good tme scratching it and they've not left one mark on the floor, which proves the floor is quite hard-wearing.

All in all I would recommend laminate, but I would definitely say it's worth spending a bit more to get some really good-looking stuff.

Summary: Not ideal if you live in a block of flats, but does looks very modern