Swiffer...and away! (Laminate Flooring)

Member Name: mreyre

Product:	Laminate Flooring
Date:	24/09/01 (6452 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes the room look much bigger and brighter, quite easy to lay, with no glueing required, cleans very easily with a Swiffer brush

Disadvantages: Quite expensive for what it is, chips and splinters very easily, all the accessories can cost a lot of money.

I've recently completed a major summer project. This was to lay laminate flooring in our spare bedroom. Tired of the very worn, grey carpet, we were eager to jazz up the room, "Changing Rooms" style, so we decided to go for laminate flooring instead of carpet. Also, our daughter gets quite bad asthma, so we thought this would help her health.

A trip to B&Q and a bank loan (not quite) later, I purchased several packs of Locmaster 1200 Laminate flooring. I also bought several accessories, including a video, 2 packs of blue bits of plastic (to provide air gaps), 2 packs of underlay, and various other bits and bobs. The beauty of the Locmaster flooring, or so they claim, is that they simply fit together with no glueing required.

Firstly, I took up the old carpet and gave the floorboards a good clean. I then laid the underlay, which looks like something out of the Space Shuttle. I had to fix this together with special tape, which is included in the price (good old B & Q).

Then, I laid my fisrt plank. This is actually not as simple as it sounds, as the instructions actually state that you should start laying on the longest wall. However, my longest wall has a radiator on it, and I didn't fancy cutting the first plank. Therefore, I started on a different wall, which may have caused me problems.

Anyway, I then laid my second plank, and, as promised, the floorboards did indeed clip together.
Now for the third plank. Hmmm. This one needs sawing.
Out with the trusty Black and Decker (well B & Q value, actually) Workmate and Jigsaw. Zzzzzzzzz, oops, splinter, splinter.
Yes, folks, I had sawn my first floorboard and splintered the wood completely. Hmmm, odd, this, I thought, so this time I tried a handsaw, thinking that perhaps the jigsaw was too powerful for the wood. Nope.
Splinter, splinter again.

Another trip to B & Q resulted in some specialist laminate floor cutting jigsaw blades. Silly me, I
should have known! Nothing on the packaging to tell me I needed those, ah well, they zinged through the floorboards a treat with no splintering! Amazing!

I had to be careful to off-step each row as I continued down the room, laying floorboards as I went, as this adds extra strength. As the video instructs, you must also be careful to place the little blue plastic things at the edges so as to leave an air gap. This allows the wood to expand and contract without bulging in the middle. So now you know!

As I reached the far edge of the room, it was then I realised the need for a trained monkey. I found it extremely difficult to get my fingers between the last plank of wood and the wall without causing major injury. However, I managed it with a lot of persuasion (and swearing).

Having laid all the floorboards, I thought that this might be the end of the story. However, I was very much mistaken. Of course, I was forgetting the little blue plastic things. These have to be taken out. Ah yes, but I now have big gaps between the floorboard and skirting. Well, my DIY fan, B&Q have just the thing. You now need some edging strips, matching the colour of your floorboards of course.

Another trip to B & Q, only to find that in my colour there were only 3 strips in stock! I was initially told that I could not order these, so went home clutching my one-corner's worth of edging and a tube of "No More Nails". A week later, and still no wood edging, I had to drive all the way to my nearest B&Q Warehouse in Norwich to get a car-load of wood strip!

Of course, this has to be sawn to perfection (I found a small hacksaw does the trick) and mitred with a 45 degree angle otherwise more gaps appear. This is a very tricky job, and a bit of wood filler may be handy.

You can also buy touch-up "gel" which you can use to hide any bodges (I have used 3 tubes to date!!) One annoying thing is that for the price, the wood do
es chip VERY easily. The other day, my three year old dropped her toy drum on it and a small crack appeared, after about a month of laying this is not brilliant!

You can also buy little radiator pipe stickers, but unfortunately in my case the colour of the sticker hardly matches with the colour of the wood.

However, the room does look brilliant now it's finished. The grain of the wood makes the room look about twice as big, and it is much brighter. I thought the floor may have felt cold, but actually the underlay provides more than adequate insulation. It also keeps much cleaner than carpet, all you need is one of those Swiffer mop devices, a quick whoosh round and it looks like new again.

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