Boring Flooring (Laminate Flooring)

Member Name: gryphon

Product:	Laminate Flooring
Date:	01/04/01 (1490 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks great

Disadvantages: tricky round hatch

Flooring can be fun!

Well, maybe not quite as O.T.T. as that, but you can get very good results with modern high pressure laminate flooring, which is rather rewarding once it's done.

Our dining room was sadly in need of a new floor covering, and the cupboard under the stairs wasn't a good place to keep wine- the bottles kept getting broken by the hoover.
Serendipity beckoned: why not build a trapdoor in the dining room floor, to create a wine cellar underneath in the 2 foot crawl space: always the same temperature, and out of harms way?

Easier said than done, maybe, but nothing daunted, we tore up the old carpet and got to work.

Cutting a square out of the flooring, spanning three joists so as the edges coincided with the joists, started the rudiments of our trapdoor, then I cut out the joist that spanned the middle of the resulting hole and attached more joist round the sides of the hole, supporting the two cut ends I'd created with posts down to the ground [resting on slate].

Next, I edged the resulting hole in beech strip: standing proud by the thickness of the laminate flooring plus underlay. Edging the actual trapdoor the same way, and I was ready for the actual floor laying.

Because of the nature of the flooring- a free floating single piece over the underlay, it needed special treatment when I reached the trapdoor, as it would be no good if it could bounce up and ride over or slide away from this boundary.

I ended the underlay an inch from the beech strip, and glued down thin ply the same thickness as the underlay in this inch gap. I then glued the flooring down to this ply, after cutting to fit, as round any obstacle, holding it down with cramps and a backing block until set.

Precise work, as the joint between laminate and beech strip had to be as good as possible, as it'll never be hidden. The beech strip needed nice neat mitre joints as well, so everything li
ned up, and I aimed for a sixteenth clearance between trapdoor and frame- practically this means that there'll never be more than an eighth of an inch gap on any one side, if the lids not quite centred.

The rest of the room was a standard installation of the laminate- just remember to keep a damp cloth to clean up any squeezed out glue as you go. I used a cheap hardpoint saw for cutting the boards- if you need to tuck them under the architrave [door surround] when you reach a door, you can trim a very thin sliver off the bottom of the architrave by laying the saw flat on the floor and flexing the blade parallel with the floor then working it back and forth until the wood is removed. [This is easier with a cheaper saw with a thinner blade!].

The trap door lid needed the laminate glued down round the edges onto thin ply as on the main floor, and I finished it off by strengthening with two 2x3 cross members on the underside, and fitting two brass drop ring handles in the top.

The end result is very impressive- we don't need a rug in our dining room- I can bore our guests by telling them about the trapdoor instead <g>.

It's worn very well over the past three years, and we've installed the same flooring in our conservatory, which lies off our dining room, so's it all matches. [even more to bore people with!]

The beech strip round the trap was for three reasons:
One; the laminate was beech stave effect, so it'd match.
Two; beech is hard wearing.
Three; a bare laminate edge would be very sharp and liable to chipping.

Summary: