Lamanate flooring

[Meenah]

I just finished a floor, vinyl tile, and it really turned out quite nice. I picked a tile that actually looks like stone. The hardest part was cutting the 1/4 round wood strips to go around the baseboard!!!! I went to Home Depot, and also utilized the DIY website.

[poky]

We just helped friends put down wood laminate planking in their basement, and we did our guest room a year or two ago. Very *very* easy. Starts out kinda slow, because the first couple rows are going to take a little more effort to "click" together correctly, but once you're a couple rows in, it goes *fast*. For ease of installation, I recommend getting the stuff that has the underlayment built in (that's what our friends had; ours wasn't, and laying the rows of underlayment separately takes a bit more effort), and the wider each plank is, the quicker the whole project goes, too.

Definitely buy an "installation kit", which should look like this: http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/ ... 98_3839070

the spacers will come with, but you really don't have to *buy* them, you just need *something* to keep the flooring from going all the way to the wall on the two sides that you're pushing the flooring toward as you install (you want at least 1/4" to 1/2" between the flooring and the wall on all sides, to allow for expansion).

This page lays it out reasonably well: http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000219.html

I'm not sure what it means about "keep the left-overs", though - if you do it right, there won't be much - when you cut one plank short for the end of one row, you use the rest of that piece to start the next row; no waste at all. If your room's perfectly square, this will leave you with perfectly staggered end seams, though, and for some people, that's too...artificial, but the solution to that is to use the rest of that piece to start the row 2 or 3 rows down, rather than the next one - makes it more random, still without much waste at all. *shrug*. I think there are brands that sell planks in varying lengths for exactly this reason, too.

Basically, follow the instructions you get with the stuff you buy, and expect the first few rows to be a bit of a pain, but know that it'll go really quick after that.

The very worst part is if you have to rip the last row; cutting those planks lengthwise is probably the most time-consuming part.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

-Sandy

[SueC]

My dh has installed laminate flooring in 3 rooms in our house. Two of the rooms (baby room and office) were done over 6 years ago and are holding up great under a lot of traffic. The other room is our kitchen, which has been down for a few years now and is also holding up really good. It is a snap to care for, I highly recommend it. I can't exactly comment on the installation, but dh basically taught himself how to do it and knocked it out in a few days.

Doing it now.

Our friends recently put down laminate. I think the hardest part for them was prepping the subfloor so they hired a handyman friend to help with that part.