laminate floor repair – Five Simple Steps to Install Laminate Wood Flooring
You love the look of real wood and have always dreamed of owning
a home with beautiful wood floors. But, is hardwood the best
choice for you? Have you considered a very attractive alternative
laminate wood flooring?
Laminate wood flooring is much less expensive than hardwood
flooring, it’s very durable, and it comes in almost endless colors
and patterns. Laminate flooring can fool the most finicky of
friends. Your friends may very well compliment you on your
beautiful wood floors! You’ll have to decide whether or not to
confess that your floors are laminate.
Most often, friends will be very curious about your laminate
floor and its installation. They will be impressed when they find
out just how easy it is to install a laminate floor — and that
you did it yourself!
Here are five simple steps to follow when installing your new
laminate floor:
1. Prepare the Sub Floor
Since laminate flooring is a “floating” floor your preparations
will be minimal. The “sub floor” is the floor you are installing
the laminate flooring on. You can install laminate flooring over
tile, vinyl, concrete, natural stone, etc. The main point to
ensure is that the floor is level and flat. Make sure that you
remove any old carpet nails or lumps of glue that are ¼ inch high
or higher. Any holes that are larger than three inches should be
filled in. Be sure to clean the sub floor — remove debris,
dirt, dust, etc before beginning your project.
2. Determine the Amount of Flooring Needed
Measure the length and width of the room where the new floor will
be installed. Multiply the width times the length to get the
square footage of the room.
For example, a room that is 12 ft wide and 14 ft long would be
168 square feet. To simplify, round off the number to 170 square
feet. If the brand of laminate flooring you are using comes in
planks in a box of approximately 17 square feet, you will need
about 10 boxes of flooring. You will need to add 5-10% more
flooring due to waste when the boards are cut or for the few
mistakes that may occur as you are learning. To be sure you will
have enough, and extra is always better than running out, you need
to buy about 20 boxes of laminate flooring for the 12 ft by 14 ft
room.
Don’t forget to buy the under layment – a 1/8 inch thick
cushioned plastic that goes under the laminate and works as a
moisture barrier and a sound barrier. The under layment comes in
rolls about three feet wide by about 150 feet long. You will need
the same number of square feet of flooring and under layment.
3. Determine Which Direction to Lay the Floor
Generally, you will want to lay the floor planks parallel to the
light that enters the room.
4. Start Laying Your New Laminate Floor
Roll out the under layment across the length of the room in the
direction you will be laying your floor. Cut the under layment
to fit all the way across the floor with an overlap of about an
inch on each end.
Lay out a row of planks to determine how many will fit.
Beginning in the corner, lay the first plank on top of the under
layment. Place ¼ inch spacers between the plank and the wall on
the end and sides of the plank. Make sure that the under layment
comes up higher along the wall than the laminate plank. Lay the
second plank along the short side of the first plank and snap them
together. Continue this until you can no longer place a whole
plank on the floor.
At this point, you will need to measure how long of a plank you
will need to fill the remaining spot. Using an electric handsaw,
you can easily cut the plank. Snap that piece into place and your
first row is completed.
Use the cut piece as the first plank in the second row. On this
row and continuing rows, you will snap the plank onto the long
side of the previous row. The subsequent planks will be snapped
into place on the long side of the previous row but than also must
be snapped into the short side of the new row. You will need to
use a hammer and a special block to gently move the new plank into
position. Continue this process until all rows are complete.
5. Finish the Edges
Now all you need is to finish the edges. Add baseboards or ¼
round trim to the edges of the room to create a finished look.
Also, install door jams to separate your new laminate flooring
from other types of flooring.
At this point, your floor should look fabulous. Congratulate
yourself on a job well done. Replace your furniture and invite a
few friends over to enjoy your new floor with you. Chances are
you will receive many compliments.
Don’t choose your new laminate wood floor, or any other flooring, without taking a few miniutes to find out what’s available and what will fit your lifestyle and budget the best. Learn more tips for making home improvements and learn more about laminate wood flooring.
Article Source:
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Laminate Flooring has made the most significant change to the flooring industry in the last 25 years and continues to make tremendous changes and improvements over is hard surface counter parts.
In Europe they have been enjoying its features and benefits for several decades but not as laminate flooring as we know today. Decorative laminate was really the origins and the beginning of what now is known as laminate flooring. The decorative laminate was widely used in kitchen counter tops and furniture. As the technology evolved in the counter top laminate industry it clearly became apparent that with the endless number of decors that could be created, could also be created and used on the floor.
The idea of laminate flooring was born. There have been many technical challenges the first of which was how can you take a simple counter top laminate and create a flooring product, the flooring product will take far more abuse by being walked on and a wear layer was created.
There has really been no stopping the technical tidal wave of improvements and ideas that followed. Led mainly by the European countries laminate flooring gained more market share year after year, no market experienced such rapid growth as North America. Massive marketing campaigns led by such brands as Pergo who are now synonymous with laminate flooring introduced laminate flooring to the American Public in the early 1990s.
The actual history of laminate flooring is quite short in North America, because Pergo had achieved household recognition with the new flooring products Laminate flooring in North America was widely referred to as “Pergo” floors again the synonymous status and the ‘holy grail’ of all brands.
In 2000 laminate flooring was a glue product; even so the market share within the flooring industry in North America continued to grow at a double digit pace. Many of the other US traditional floor covering manufacturers of carpet and vinyl added laminate flooring to their portfolio of products.
Then so was born the private label laminate. Laminate flooring was easy to private label you simply changed the insert or the packaging and then that created another brand or line of flooring. This was especially useful for the hardwood and carpet manufacturer’s to get on board with this new product. The traditional manufacturers of carpet and hardwood have huge distribution networks and with their own branded line of flooring were able to place thousands of new flooring displays in a matter of months and new brands started appearing everywhere. This continued to drive the growth in the USA.
As traditional US manufacturers of carpet and vinyl presented themselves as laminate flooring manufacturers, advertised the products, placed laminate flooring displays and drove sales.
Time Line in the US Market The next stages of growth were equally fast and I will break them down chronologically:
2000 was particularly painful for the Carpet Manufactures in Dalton, Georgia they were completely blindsided by the aggressive marketing of laminate flooring against their carpet and that is where the laminate took most of their market share from touting the Laminate Flooring product as hypo allergenic and showing close ups of carpet mites and bugs did nothing to help the domestic carpet manufacturers.
All hard surface flooring companies benefited. It was an exciting year for laminate flooring salesmen, even with terrible installation demonstrations and glue together flooring.
2001 Every year that preceded 2000 involved new, exciting and innovative changes to the laminate flooring market. The first change really started in 2001 glue free laminate. This was first introduced with metal clips on the back and during sales presentations as you tried to put it together you almost needed a sledge hammer, it was more difficult than the glue together method. Not very popular but the concept was created all we needed was the design and solution.
2002 A year later the technology of glue-less laminate flooring arrived, introductions of glue-less laminates began again revolutionizing the floor covering industry. Unilin Industries of Belgium introduced Quick-Step into the US market. Quick-Step utilizes the patented Uniclic joint system. Several other manufacturers bought licenses to use the Uniclic joint technology thereby acknowledging Uniclic as the industry standard for Glue-less technology.
Still 95% of the USA market was using glue together laminate, it took yet more aggressive marketing and this time mainly led by the home centers with names like ‘Easy-Lock’, ‘Quick-Lock’, ‘Speedy-Lock’, etc, to drive the consumer towards the exceptionally friendly D.I.Y. glue-less laminate flooring ranges.
It was predicted in 2002 that buy 2004 100% of the laminate flooring industry will be glue-less.
2003 This again proved to be a dynamic year within the laminate flooring industry, sales of the product per square foot continued to climb, but lawsuits with regards to patents over the locking system and who created and who could use it surfaced and would continue on for many years. Aside from the lawsuits the technology now happy with the glue-less free install and now a particularly D.I.Y. friendly product focused on creating the product to be as realistic as hardwood as possible.
2004 This saw some dramatic changes in the quality of the laminate product itself. The standard glue-free laminate flooring product was 7″ wide by 54″ long and it had a light ‘ticking’ effect, the panels went together with glue-less free locking system. Mostly all of the products were imports and mainly from Europe.
Towards the end of 2004 laminate flooring factories (though not fully integrated and small in comparison to the European counterparts) started appearing across the USA. The larger US manufacturers of carpets invested in laminate flooring facilities though they were not fully integrated (we can explore the importance of vertical integration later). But this showed the US retailer and distributor that the product was here to and it was time to start backing a horse.
This led to more innovation from overseas, the first was a wood grain texture – the laminate itself had heavier wood texture but it was random and not too realistic in effect a modest upgrade, at first all manufacturers tried to sell this improvement for $0.20SF to distribution but the reality was their was no manufacturer cost increase to produce this texture – it was just a different pressure plate.
2005 The lawsuits over the locking system continued, incidentally the locking system lawsuit is not about the easy angle long joint of the laminate flooring, all the law suits focus on the end locking joint.
The chase to create an exact wood replicate of hardwood flooring continued and this led to a technology called ‘Register and Emboss’ or ‘Embossed and Registered’. The idea of this was for the pattern of the oak for example to be perfectly indented into the wood panel, so the grain of the Oak or Cherry was realistic to the touch.
All the manufacturers soon chased this technology, it required a relatively simple process, create the correct paper (décor pattern) and then have a press plate and the end of the manufacturing process to match that paper décor and then you have the grain embossed.
Legal arguments over who came up with that technology all ensued.
2006 The year of branding, distributors with ‘own brand’ tried to position themselves as manufacturers – one of the biggest being a vinyl manufacturer tried to position themselves as market leaders. Acquisitions also followed, Mohawk Industries bought Unilin ‘Quick-Step’ in 2006. This also became the year of the home center business, where having your labeled product in one of the three main US home centers was the ultimate goal.
One of the major carpet manufacturers and distributors with there factory in Dalton gained the business with Home Depot. Pergo was well positioned with a vinyl manufacturer you had private labeled their laminate line into Lowes Home Improvement Stores. Being a vinyl manufacturer and not a laminate manufacturer create a major problem and a crucial weakness as Lowes Home Improvement shifted their purchasing policy to ‘only’ buy factory direct.
A major Swiss group and manufacturer of laminate flooring also with the world’s largest factory in Heiligengrabe, Germany had been quietly building a factory in Barnwell, SC and at the right time were able to replace the vinyl manufacturer as supplier to Lowes Home Improvement.
2007 This really saw the legal issue on the locking system end as two legal systems emerged, one under Valinge Innovation and Uniclic Licensees each with approximately 100 partners paying royalties of roughly $0.04SF to $0.07SF. Licensees were granted all over the world and this led way to the re-emergence of Chinese laminate flooring.
In the mid 1990 China was one of the fastest growing laminate flooring markets in the world and most of this was supplied by shipping in container from Europe, there were huge distributors in China 100 containers a month in size – or 2,400 pallets a month. It did not take long for Chinese ingenuity to copy the process and buy 2001, China had a slew of factories (with large Government subsidies), some of this product came back as imports in to the USA, but the legal issues with locking systems and potential freezes of stock, cease and desist letter flying about scared off most distributors.
2008 China was back, this time the large factories had license agreements and were legal, the machines that made the laminate flooring were from Europe and the product quality was excellent.
There market tactics were equally excellent, instead off going after the low end dog fighting market of the 7mm and 8mm, they created a new look. A narrow plank and beveled the edges, this new narrow plank was approximately 5″ wide compared to the standard 8″ from Europe, the 5″ wide was a one plank look and combined with the bevel, register and embossing they had created the ultimate flooring.
This was it, everything over the last 25 years culminated to this point a flooring that had a narrow board look 5 inches wide, beveled or micro beveled on all four side, realistic textured surface and a lifetime warranty.
The European’s adjusted, but they were for once on the back foot, China instead of going after the low end market aimed high with a high quality, the highest quality laminate you could buy and they could make it and make it affordable to the US market.
2009 It is not clear where we can go from here, but the same was probably said in 2005, laminate flooring is now so good in appearance that you cannot tell it apart from real hardwood, the only clue is the price laminate flooring is far less expensive than real wood with more color choices. 2009 will be a difficult economic year and so will 2010. Consumers will focus on quality and price. Brand will become less important as the consumer becomes more educated. The huge price fluctuations four sided beveled and narrow plank from one distributor priced at $5SF and from another $0.89SF and yet absolutely no technical difference in the product. Consumer will research and the gap will close.
Laminate flooring in the US market is a remarkable story of growth and ingenuity. I do not think that a couple of tough economic years will have much impact on its future survival. It is an excellent product and with some effort and research by the consumer you can get incredible value.
2041
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Kronotex Laminate Flooring only $0.75SF
Original Article from James Adverto
Contact: james@buildersdepotdirect.com
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In discussions about laminated vs engineered floor some might like to put engineered hardwood in the laminate flooring category. Some might suggest engineered is just an inferior version of solid strip hardwood flooring. But in reality it is neither. In fact, the original engineered hardwood floor was a sophisticated answer for difficult installation environments, environments where solid wood could not be used.
It was designed for the wood snob, those that enjoyed fine wine and had an Audi parked in the driveway, clients that owned high rise condominiums in exotic locations. They decorated with silk Venetian blinds, and cultured marble fixtures. For their floors they were looking for real wood with all its subtleties of colour and richness of grain. These clients wanted the Real Thing but couldn’t install it!
Suggesting a laminate floor for them, was like saying all wine is “fine” and all cars are a Lamborghini! Laminate flooring is made by taking a picture of a real wood and reproducing it photographically on the surface of plywood. It offers some great features (and some poor ones) but it’s not the real thing, any more that U-brew can equate to a find bottle of Australian Shiraz.
So engineered hardwood flooring came to be! Wood techies took a slice of real wood, whether that be a traditional American red oak or an exotic wood like Brazilian cherry and found a way to adhere it to a wood underlay. But why would you bother? Why couldn’t these clients just use regular strip hardwood flooring?
The answer is easy. Condominium dwellers have cement floors, likewise for those sophisticated builders that install in-floor heating systems on poured cement foundations. Standard Strip flooring cannot be nailed over a cement slab. Engineered floors offered a solution. They are designed for glue down or floating applications so that clients get a real wood floor with a design that fits their installation needs.
Now that’s not all that is great about engineered hardwood flooring. Its greater dimensional stability also allows it to be installed in a basement, or adjoining sun rooms. It is the perfect answer for decorative borders. It offers wide plank options that would not be wise in environments where the humidity is in constant flux.
So sure you can put in laminate flooring but that’s not the real thing! Engineered hardwood flooring is a solution that allows you to install real wood in areas where solid strip hardwood is not suitable. So in a comparison of laminated vs engineered floor, these are two different products like buying ceramic tile versus real marble slabs. Your choice!
Having said all that, the actual construction of an engineered floor can be flawed or fantastic, just depending on who and where it was made. It is critically important to know what to look for.
Some of the more recent entries into the engineered flooring market have been made with an eye to saving money and not with the original intend to produce a superior dimensionally stable product. Do your homework and find out everything there is to know about engineered wood flooring
Karen Lacasse draws on 25+ years of woodworking experience, both as a woodworking teacher and industrial woodworker/owner of Lacasse Fine Wood Products. She is the author behind woodsthebest.com where you will find articles and resources to help with all your hardwood flooring purchases and for that matter anything else you would like to know about wood. ENJOY!
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