Home Renovation with Hardwood Laminate Flooring

Why Choose Hardwood Laminate Flooring

Laying a hardwood laminate floor is one of the easier ways of improving the value of your home without a huge degree of cost. My husband and I recently moved into our one bedroom apartment, but before doing so, felt that the carpet on the floor was getting a touch too old. So we looked around at all the different flooring options we could find. These included carpet, ceramic tiles, genuine hardwood floor boards, bamboo, cork and laminated floor boards. We found the cheapest to be the hardwood laminated flooring.

Hardwood laminated floorboards are made from several layers of material that are bonded together. The layers can be made from mdf layed in differing directions to give them strength and also resist scuffing and staining. The top layer is usually a photo of the type of hardwood that is being mimicked with a clear finishing to protect it. Alternatively the top layer can be the actual hardwood itself that has been reclaimed from old buildings that have been demolished. This type of hardwood laminate flooring is more expensive. All types of hardwood including oak, pine, mahogany, ash and cherry hardwoods can be found as laminates. Up until recently this type of flooring looked to some extent to be fake (which of course it is), but with the current technology it is easy to find genuine looking laminate flooring.

So other than cost of materials, why did we decide to go with the laminate flooring. Well there is also the issue of installation. Laminate floor boards come in packs of 10 along with an installation tool kit that allows you to easily install them yourself – obviously this helps save money by avoiding the need to hire flooring professionals. Usually the flooring sales outlet provides you with everything you will need including the underlay, flooring planks, tools and spacers. You need to supply different handyman tools like a handsaw, jigsaw and levelling compound if necessary.

Another reason why we chose hardwood laminate flooring over carpet was due to story that my husband’s best friend, John, told hime several months before we had our first child – we moved in one month before our first child was born. Initially I was keen to get the laminated flooring but my husband wanted carpet. During our discussion he remembered that John had installed laminated floorboards into his familys unit several years ago. So he decided to give John a ring to see if the floorboards had turned out ok and to get any advice he could about them. Upon ringing him, John told him of a time after installing them where his 9 month old daughter had been playing on the floor while John was on the phone. When John turned back a few minutes later he was shocked to find his daughter with her nappy off happily drawing on the floorboards using poo as paint. My husband quickly saw the advantages of having solid floorboards over material carpets.

This left us with one last alternative – ceramic tiles. But we both quickly agreed that the coldness of ceramic tiles in the winter was not something we would be looking forward to. Hardboard laminated floors would be far warmer and more inviting than the ceramic tiles.

It was decided then. Laminated flooring it was to be. At the time my husband was also renovating the unit by adding a kitchette and finishing the bedroom. So all of that had to be finished first before he could lay the flooring. We decided that the kitchette would in fact have ceramic tiles. It would have been fine to have the laminated boards in the kitchen even though the kitchen is prone to spills. As long as the spills are wiped up promptly, laminated floorboards in the kitchen is quite acceptable. But for the tiles to be layed we hired tiling professionals. They came along and gave us a quote which included a layer of concrete under the tiles. It just so happened that the sub floor of the living room and bedroom where the hardwood laminate flooring was to be laid, were not at all level. The floorboards we were buying required an even subfloor with only a 3mm change over 1 meter/yard length. So the tilers ended up pouring a layer of cement through the living room and bedroom in an attempt to make it even. They almost succeeded. As it turned out, we only had about 2 days after the cement had dried to put the flooring in before we had to move in ourselves. It is possible to pour a levelling compound onto a floor that is almost even to guarantee that it is completely level. This compound has a liquid consistency that fills any lows in the floor. But it requires 2 days to set so we didn’t have enough time to use the levelling compound. Well the cement floor looked level enough and it was a great deal better than it had been before so we thought we give it a try as is. It took my husband 2 days to lay the hardwood laminate floors. Got there just in time. When he was finished there were only a few places where there was a little bit of give i.e. where there was a small amount of space under the boards but all up they turned out fine. My husband says that if he had the time back then he would have used the levelling compound and the job would have turned out perfect. I’m still happy with how it turned out though.

Preparing to lay the Hardwood Laminate Flooring

So what does it take to lay the boards. Well you start by visiting your local flooring retailer that has a choice of different boards available for you to see. Hardwood laminate flooring comes in many forms including oak, pine, mahogany and ash, just to name a few. You can also get bamboo hardwood laminate flooring or cork laminate flooring as well. If you get the bamboo hardwood laminate flooring, then you need to get as many packs as you’ll need, all at the same time. The reason being that the bamboo needs to come from the one crop, since different crops have wildly varying colours. If you buy some of your bamboo laminate boards now and some later, there is a good chance they will have a different colour. This is not usually the case with cork laminate flooring or hardwood laminate flooring.

Usually the boards come in packs of 5 or 10. Make sure you get at least 2 extra packs above what you think you will need. My husband did this and was very thankful he did, as mistakes are always part and parcel of do it yourself jobs when you undertake any project for the first time. He ended up wasting an entire pack of boards as a result of cutting them in the right place when they were facing the wrong direction for the tongue and groove system that they use. He was surprised because he is quite adept at handyman work, but he still had the good sense to realise making mistakes was possible and preparing for it.

Once you have the boards you will need to get the underlay – this can be either a felt like material or a thicker, more dense cardboard like material. Both offer a level of sound muffling and we chose the thicker one to help with the slight unevenness of the ground. Also, if you are laying the boards on concrete like we are, you need to put a waterproof barrier straight onto the concrete. This is usually a polyethylene plastic and stops moisture from being absorbed into your underlay and floorboards from the damp concrete (even if you think your concrete is dry – still use it – 99% of the time your concrete will get damp after rain because it is porous and draws the water up through it – have you ever heard of rising damp?). If water gets absorbed into your floorboards they will buckle and with continued exposure, eventually rot. The waterproof plastic generally comes in a roll. You will need a couple of lengths placed side by side and attached with gaffer tape.

Finally the flooring retailer should provide you with either moulding or skiring boards, doorway mouldings and a tool kit for installing the boards. These may need to be purchased though as was the case in our situation. In fact, we went to a local hardware store where we bought raw wood skirting boards that we painted ourselves.
Once you have all of this you need to place the boards in the room that they will be layed in. Leaving them here for at least 48 hours will acclimatize them to the humidity so that they do most of their expanding before you lay them.

That’s it for now. I’ll get my husband to write the next post as to how he actually laid the hardwood laminate flooring.