How to Easily Install Your New Laminate Flooring
Unlike many jobs that will bring your home up to date, installing laminate flooring is quite easy. You need very little skill and most installations can be carried out without professional help. If you have rounded areas that need to be cut to shape and you are not to confident then leave that to the experts. Most of the time a room will only have straight edges and should pose no problem.
The first thing you should do is let your laminate flooring acclimatise to the room it is to be fitted in. Like all building materials the boards are able to expand and contract. So that your flooring doesn’t bow or warp once in place, leave the packs of boards in their intended room for two days before fitting. They should be kept away from external walls during this time.
It’s usually easiest to fit the planks working off the longest flat edge in the room. This will mean less cutting of boards where they meet the wall and so less wastage. Once you have your boards laid out for your first row, you will be able to see before fitting them, how the following row will be staggered. By staggering (like brick work where the halfway point of a board lies over the join of two in the next row) your floor will have much more strength. You should always try and have at least eight inches or around 20cm lengths at the end of a row.
You should also make sure that you leave a quarter of an inch gap between the floor and anything fixed in the room like walls or staircases. This is to stop buckling when the floor expands naturally. Don’t worry about any gaps you can simply attach beading to your skirting board to finish the look once the floor is fitted.
To fit around pipes, measure and mark on the board exactly where the centre point of the pipe is to be and drill out a hole. Now cut the board straight through the middle of the hole and glue it back in place as you fit around the pipe. Don’t forget to drill a hole larger than the pipe to allow for expansion.
Once you have the first row in place a trade tip is to connect the second row together all the way along its length. This means that when you come to attach it to the first row it’s just a simple click and the row is down in one. Otherwise you have to click each board to the first row and to the board to its left or right in turn.