No More Cartpet Stains For Me! (B&Q)

Member Name: andy0304

Product:	B&Q
Date:	16/09/04 (686 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks great, easy to install

Disadvantages: slippery, can chip easilly

Whilst decorating we soon realised that the carpet that we had in our living room was no longer going to match with the new wallpaper etc and that it was going to have to go. Being that our living room is quite large we knew this was going to be an expensive job, so rather than just goto one place we decided we would need to look around.

Whilst in Carpet Right we see the Laminate Flooring display stand and quite liked the look of the Beech Effect Laminate unfortunately we felt this was quite expensive so decided to continue looking around and be it that we both work for B&Q decided that we would have a good look there whilst at work.

However my real concern about buying it from there was the number of packs that I had seen being returned over time. On looking into this further it appeared to be that 80% of those coming back were the special offer one for about £10 per pack. So at that point we knew we were not going for that.

On looking through the rest of the range of flooring with the help of the brochures as I by any means are no flooring expert we came across some Beech laminate flooring that we just lock together without glue for just over £20 per pack. After a few calculations we had worked out we were going to need approximately 12 packs. Although this could work out quite expensive by the time we had purchased the underlay etc it was still cheaper than a decent carpet and this we could try and fit ourselves. So we purchased all the accessories we needed, the underlay the spacing wedges, the castors for the settees, and the trim to go round the skirting to hide the gap you leave round the edges. Overall it cost us about £300 but it was what we had decided on so well worth it.

The flooring we eventually chose was a Floormaster LOC Beech Effect flooring which also comes with a 12 year guarantee so possibly well worth the money. The only problem now was having to find the time to do it as we guessed it would probably take a day to do.

We eventually found a day when we were both off from work and soon began to realise that we were going to have to do half the room at a time as we did not have the space to move everything out of the room. So we ripped up half the carpet and with the use of the spacer wedges we bought in order to leave the recommended 10mm gap round the edge we began to lay the first row. The joy of this one is you can walk on it when laid with no waiting for glue to dry.

To my surprise the flooring went together incredibly easily with no problems and the only cutting we were having to do was to fit the last plank in. Overall I think it took us about 3-4 hours to fit the rest of it and what took the longest was the last row as we had to cut each plant right down the centre length ways, but with the help of a jigsaw we were able to do this.

If need be you can also purchase a fitting kit with contains a lot the parts you need to help fit it as it contains the spacers, a pull bar to help you pull in the last row, a tapping block which you can put onto the flooring and tap the block with the hammer as opposed to damaging the flooring. For those of you that are still unsure we did notice you can purchase a video to show you how. But some advice when fitting: because of the way the flooring is made cut it outside if at all possible as the amount of dust that it creates is huge, check the height of your doors as we had to cut about 10mm of the bottom of our door as the flooring was higher than the old carpet.

The flooring now has been down a couple of months and although there is a few downsides to laminate flooring we are really pleased with the quality. The downsides being that it can be quite slippery especially after you have cleaned it, can chip if something is dropped on it. The advantages though are that it looks really good and can be laid by anyone, no more paying out for those expensive carpet fitters. Just be prepared to be patient when laying it as some planks do require a little bit of help to get into place we can be quite annoying when you are trying to get the job done, but I would certainly buy this product again it was well worth it. I would certainly recommend anyone who is looking to replace your old flooring to take a look at this.

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