Hi, I'm Dean Johnson from Hometime.
We installed our first laminate floor about 10 years ago.
This product has a lot going for it.
It comes in a lot of different looks, it's very durable.
The installation is really fairly straightforward.
Since then we've probably installed about a dozen floors or so.
I'm going to give you some tips and techniques on installing a variety of floating floor
systems.
We'll start off with the latest type of laminate flooring, which just snaps together.
Then we'll look at the original installation system, where you glue the edges and hold
them in place with straps while the glue dries.
We'll go over the installation of square tiles, which use the same techniques, but
give you an entirely different look.
And we'll look at the trim pieces, accessories and finishing tips that will give your installation
a professional look.
We'll also see how the same techniques can be used for flooring made with real wood.
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There are a few things that make this a great product for floor installation.
First of all, it's a laminate surface, very much like countertop.
Very durable product.
And it's a photographic image that's mapped onto the surface so they can use just about
anything.
It gives it a very realistic look.
Comes in wide planks so it installs very quickly.
Also it's a very seamless look.
It's real hard to pick up exactly where the seams are located.
This floats on top of the floor.
It's basically like a big laminate rug.
There's an expansion gap that we leave around the entire outside of the floor so the floor
can expand and contract with different changes in temperature and humidity.
Which is also a good reason why you want this to acclimate in a space before installing
it.
Now here's a few other things that apply to any laminate installation.
It's a good idea to remove any baseboards or moldings in the room.
For door jams, you probably won't want to take those off.
So you use a jam saw to cut off the bottom of the casing and jam.
This way you'll be able to slip the laminate flooring underneath.
You also should clean out the surface, scrape off any lumps of paint or drywall mud, fill
any voids, and fix any unevenness.
Depending on the type of laminate flooring you're using and the situation, you need
to put down some layers of plastic or foam before you install the flooring.
In basements, you'll almost always have to put down a 6 mil thick polyethylene vapor
barrier.
This helps keep moisture from coming up through the slab into the underside of the flooring.
You may also want to spread out a cushioning underlayment.
Usually this will be a roll of rubbery foam.
We prefer to put this down one roll at a time as we work.
This particular type of laminate flooring snaps together with a locking tongue and groove
joint.
No glue is required.
And the foam underlayment is already installed on the back side.
Most manufacturers will have a product very much like this and the installation is relatively
similar.
The only thing that we'll want to do is take off the tongue on the pieces on the first
roll that go up against the wall.
It's easiest to do this on a table saw, but it's also possible with a circular saw.
When you cut laminate, you always want the teeth of the blade to be cutting into the
surface and coming out the back side.
This will give you the cleanest cut.
With a table saw, you saw the flooring with the finish side up.
You also need to cut the tongue off the short edge of the first piece in the first row.
With a circular saw, cut the flooring with the finish side down.
To get started, you also need to cut starter pieces for the second and third rows.
To start the installation, you connect the first piece in the second row to the first
piece in the first row.
You do this a little ways out from the wall so that you can kneel on the first piece and
pull the second piece towards you.
When the piece is locked together, you should hear a distinct snap.
Next, install the second piece in the first row.
Again, the joint should snap into place.
For this third piece, it helps to have something heavy holding the end of the row down.
Start by putting the short ends together, leaving a small gap along the long edge.
Then lift the piece up at a slight angle and pull it towards you.
It should snap into place along the long seam, but don't be surprised if it takes you a
little while to get the knack of doing this.
Now I'm ready to measure for the last piece in the first row.
I push these pieces tight up against the side wall, putting in spaces to create a quarter
inch expansion gap.
As you measure, make sure you remember that you'll want to end up with a quarter inch
gap between the last piece and the wall.
When you're cutting this flooring, you need to think very carefully about which end you're
cutting and which you're saving, especially since you'll be cutting with the finished
side down.
Make sure the cut end is the one that will be butting into the wall.
Or another way to put it, make sure the piece you end up with has a long and a short edge
that still have a tongue.
Once you install the last piece in the first row, repeat the process for the last piece
in the second row.
Measure making sure to leave a quarter inch gap.
Cut, thinking carefully about which end you cut.
And install the piece.
Once the two rows are complete, you finally get to push the whole assembly up against
the wall.
To get a sense of how well it's going to fit, you need to put the spacers in on each
side and examine how much of a gap there is between the flooring and the back wall.
Often you'll find that the back wall isn't perfectly square or straight, or that it bows
in in the middle, leaving too large a gap.
If this is the case, you'll need to scribe the back edge.
It helps to put some masking tape along the back edge of the pieces in this row.
Then you hold a thick pencil flat against the wall and trace the contour of the wall
onto the masking tape.
You can also use a drawing compass for this.
Once you've finished drawing the scribe, you should label the position of all the pieces
and take everything apart.
Now you can cut the scribe onto the pieces in the first row.
It works best to use a jigsaw to cut the scribe.
Once the scribe pieces are cut, reassemble everything.
Again, you need to do this a couple feet out from the wall, so that you kneel on the first
row pieces with your back to the wall and pull the second row pieces towards you to
lock them together.
If everything was cut and scribed and labeled correctly, once you push it back into place
and add spacers all the way around, you should have a consistent quarter inch gap between
the flooring and the wall on all three sides.
Now you're ready to start installing more flooring.
You should begin the third row with a short starter piece.
By this time you should have enough room to kneel on the flooring that's already been
installed and pull the pieces toward you.
As with almost any flooring, it's always the first few pieces that take the longest
time to install.
Once you start the third row, things start going a little bit faster.
You'd be surprised how much real estate you're covering with just a few full pieces.
The last piece in each row should be the only one you have to cut.
Depending on how long it is and how close you are to the wall, you might end up using
a pull bar and a tapping block to install it.
Both of these accessories should be available at the same store where you buy the flooring.
For the fourth row, you should be able to start off with a full piece with a tongue
cut off on the short edge.
You can also start later rows with scrap pieces that are left over from cutting the last piece
in previous rows.
These scraps will already have the tongue off, and they may help you keep the joints staggered
from row to row.
The trickiest part comes after you get the first piece down because now as you do the
second, third, fourth, and so on, you're working with two sides.
Once I get this first one done here, it's just a matter of lining everything up.
Our floor is a little uneven here, so sometimes you just have to press up and down.
You kind of develop your own tricks as you work with it.
Don't get frustrated.
It's just a matter of dealing with it a little bit.
As you move through the job, you'll have to cut the flooring to fit around corners
in the walls or obstacles or pipes.
When you do this, make sure you always leave a quarter inch expansion gap.
A little later on, we'll show you how all these get covered.
When you get to the last row where the flooring butts up against the opposite wall, you'll
have to rip down a piece to the right width.
Make sure that you leave room for a quarter inch gap, and you may also have to scribe
some of these pieces.
These pieces will be particularly hard to install since you probably won't have enough
room to grab in with your fingers and pull it.
You'll probably have to use the pull bar to force the joint together.
That's the basics for a snap-together system.
Before we start working on the finishing touches, let's take a look at what's involved in installing
a system that glues together.
Not all manufacturers will have all their styles and colors in the snap-together system,
so you may end up doing a glue-together one.
Here's what's involved.
With glue-together laminate flooring, you need to test fit the first three rows before
you glue them together for good.
You also probably need to scribe the first row to follow the contours of the wall.
Once everything is cut and test fitted, you'll be able to pull it apart, roll out the underlayment,
and start gluing it together.
The way we glue these up is to put glue in the groove.
You pretty much want to fill it up.
This will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.
Some of them barely want you to put any in the groove, and then others will actually
have you glue up the tongue.
That's because there are slight differences in how the tongue and groove work together,
so it's really important.
There you go.
You read your instructions very carefully before you do this.
Of course, I always use shims when you install these things.
We have this special little tapping device here.
Make sure that you get a real good contact between the boards.
Okay.
Ready for that one?
Yep.
Beautiful.
Okay.
As I'm installing these, you'll see that we're going to have glue coming up between the boards,
and that's really not a problem, because we'll just come back later on and wipe that off.
Most manufacturers expect that to happen during the installation.
Okay.
Now, our experience has been that the hardest part of laminate flooring installation is
just getting the first couple of rows put together.
It used to be that we'd use just a tapping block, but with just a few pieces in, you
start tapping too much on one, it starts to come apart someplace else, so we started using
these clamping straps instead.
It just clamps the pieces together and holds them nice and tight.
Now would be a good time to wipe up all this excess glue.
Now we have a special method of attack we like to use for the first three rows, and
that is once we get one of the pieces in from each of the three rows, then we like to get
everything clamped, and that's time to put in the second piece of each of the rows.
Okay.
Now, in the process of doing this, again, we'll use our little tamper, but we don't
use a slot.
This is mainly used on the very end here, so we get some real nice tight joints down
the other end of the board.
We get all three pieces in.
These are full pieces, so we want to make sure that we glue up both of the grooves here.
Okay.
Getting a little sloppy here.
I'll have to wipe this off if you want to grab the rag and wipe this off.
Just let me get this in.
Okay.
All right.
There you go.
Okay, now we can throw this one in, and once that's down, it's time to start clamping
again.
Okay.
There you go.
Taming this a little bit.
Now the trick here is once we get that clamped, so it's just about to the last couple of cranks,
it's nice to hit the end row here, so again, we get a real nice tight joint down the other
end.
Okay.
Now we just continue this pattern all the way down to the end.
Go ahead and pop this one out here.
Now when you get to the end, you can use the tapping block for nudging our board this way,
but going the other way, we have to use this pull bar to get those going nice and tight.
There we go.
Okay.
Well, things are moving along pretty quickly.
Now we've gotten this accomplished in two hours.
A dining room area like this is really pretty easy, but all we're doing is making cuts like
this on the other end, although we did have to cut out for our heat register here.
When you're doing this, of course, you want to leave a quarter inch all the way around,
and that's easily covered by the flange on the heat register once we put that in.
All right.
Aside from that, it's pretty much wide open spaces and full board.
Now as you can see, we're relying on these straps.
Now they extend out to 18 feet, and when you're using the straps, you want to make sure that
they're nice and snug, but not too tight.
If the edges of the outside boards are lifting up when you're cranking on it, you're probably
cranking on it too hard.
Now a couple of things that we realized when doing this is that you can get real careless
with the butt joints and not get them tight enough.
So we've got one person down on the end with a tapping block, and before we strap this
down too much, if he just taps on that end, okay, go ahead, and the other person watches
the joint.
Yeah, that looks pretty good right there.
Make sure that that's snug, and then just crank this down.
That should be good right there.
You also want to make sure to get this glue up before it dries.
It's a lot easier at this stage than it will be if it dries up later on.
So we're just using a scrap stick, getting up all the excess like so, and then a damp
rag to wipe it down.
Most laminate flooring comes in shapes that are going to be similar to this, but some
also come in squares, a whole different look and a little bit of a different installation
technique.
Take a look.
Well, here in the entryway, we're also converting the floor from vinyl to laminate, but here
we're using 16-inch square tiles, and with tiles, the installation is pretty much the
same, only there are two significant differences.
First of all, you need to think a little bit more about the layout.
It's kind of like creating a layout for a ceramic tile.
You want a pleasing, balanced effect.
There we go, and the other difference is that you want to use straps on every row and every
column.
So in other words, you're using straps in both directions.
Now you'd think that you'd use more straps this way, but actually, I'm going to show
you a trick where you would only use two extra straps.
Now, as soon as I'm ready to clamp a new row side to side, I move up two rows, and I take
off this side to side clamp first, and make sure that there are spacers on both ends to
keep those tiles nice and tight.
Bring this over here, start clamping this down.
So of course, you want to make sure that the side to side clamps are on top of the up and
down clamps so that you can get them off.
What makes this area so difficult is that I've got a diagonal edge going on over here
that gives me nothing to clamp to.
So what I did was I screwed down these wooden stops to the floor, and then I'll just use
those spacers and just wedge those in there to keep those tiles nice and tight.
Whatever installation type you use, finishing off the floor is pretty much the same.
There are some expansion gaps that have to be caulked, transition pieces to be added,
and then bases from other type of trim applied to cover up the expansion gap.
Once you've finished installing the flooring in an area, you can reinstall the baseboard
around the edge.
This will cover up the expansion gap between the flooring and the wall.
Usually whatever trim you've removed in the first place, including standard base shoe,
will be wide enough to cover the gap.
Matching baseboard and base shoe is often available, so you can replace your old trim
with trim that exactly matches your new flooring.
A laminate floor is pretty well protected against water.
It's mainly the exposed edge that you have to worry about.
So in areas where we might be experiencing some water, we're going to be caulking the
expansion joint.
This will also keep water from seeping into that edge, plus the caulk is flexible enough
so the floor can still expand and contract.
So we're caulking around the dishwasher in front of the sink, and then here where the
fridge is going, because we will have a water line coming in to make ice cubes, as well
as some defrosting might occur over time.
Now areas where you have a high moisture situation, like a bathroom, there you probably just want
to caulk around the entire edge of the room.
Whenever your laminate flooring butts up against a door threshold, a fireplace hearth, or something
like ceramic tile, you'll probably need to transition a piece of trim like this.
This one's about three quarters of an inch thick.
It has this vertical piece that comes down that's a quarter inch wide, and we left a
gap between our threshold and the laminate flooring of a half inch, so we'll still have
a quarter inch gap in there, which will give us enough expansion and contraction so the
floor can move.
Just a little bit, so we just place this right along the threshold, set it into the caulk,
and then of course the top portion here will provide the molding and the trim effect along
the threshold transition.
When you brought up the carpet, you need what's called a carpet reducer transition strip.
I've already pulled out the old metal grab bar that originally held the carpet in place.
One thing you have to understand about carpet, when they install this, they stretch it.
There's quite a bit of tension on it, and we don't want to lose that tension, so what
I did is put some nails in here before I did anything, and with the old grab bar up, I
installed this new track.
This is what the trim will sit in.
You can see the trim has this little bit of molding here on the bottom.
That will slide right into the track.
Just get push in there good and hard, then once the trim is installed, and I'll just
go back, put some carpet strips along here, and reinstall the carpet.
Depending on your situation, you may need other types of transition pieces.
You'll want to use a hard surface reducer if you're going from laminate to a lower
surface like vinyl.
This piece is called T-molding.
It makes a transition between two areas of laminate flooring and a doorway.
There's also a piece of nosing to use at the top of a staircase or on the treads.
Laminate is one of the most durable floors we've seen.
It only requires some vacuuming and an occasional damp mopping.
If the flooring does get some dirt or mud, it almost always wipes clean with a damp cloth.
If wax melts onto it, you'll be able to scrape it off with a soft plastic spatula.
A crayon or permanent marker should be a problem.
Use a rag with a little acetone.
And the burn mark left by a cigarette, that also can be cleaned off with acetone.
So laminate flooring is a durable material.
Now the same floating floor technology that applies to laminate floors also applies to
wood floors.
We've used floating wood floors in some of our other projects.
Take a look.
Well up here in the master bedroom, we have all the trim work done now so we're able to
move on to the floor.
Now we're using these engineered wood planks that are half inch thick.
We're going to be sending them on top of our radiant floor.
Now these are made with three different layers.
I don't know if you can see that or not, it makes them a lot more stable as the temperature
is rising and falling on the floor as well as the humidity.
There's still going to be some movement though, so rather than gluing or nailing, we're floating
the floor on top of this foam underlayment and we're leaving some small gaps at the walls
for expansion.
That's critical to prevent any buckling or separation at the glue joints.
Now with a system like this, the tongue and grooves fit very precisely, which is great
for a nice fitting floor, but at the same time if the humidity gets too high, it can
be just about impossible to install, so we really recommend that you keep them in the
package before you install them, and of course like any hardwood floor, it's always great
to activate it to the space prior to installation.
This underlayment is really nice since it has this little adhesive strip along the edges,
so when you put it down, it'll stick rather than slide around, and it's also somewhat
transparent so you can see your guidelines as you're moving along.
On floating a wood floor like this, they always recommend that you run it parallel to the
longest wall in the room, and then you don't start by laying the flooring right up against
that wall, instead what you do is measure out one width of the flooring from the wall
at a half inch for expansion and contraction, and then lay in a straight edge, shim that
straight edge out from the wall so it's good and solid, then you start laying the flooring
up against that.
Now the reason is, if your wall isn't perfectly straight and most walls aren't, that any undulations
or anything will start showing up in your joints by doing it this way, everything stays
nice and tight just the way you want it.
Now I think it's very important to realize, whenever you're working with engineered wood
flooring like this, the colors may vary slightly from box to box, so it makes a lot of sense
to open up two boxes and then just pull every other one from each of those so that you don't
end up with alternating bands of different shades as you're running across the floor.
Well hopefully this information will help you out in your floating floor project.
For Hometime, I'm Dean Johnson.