Making large-scale improvements to your house such as fitting new flooring can often seem daunting, but you’ll find with laminate floors, it only takes a few simple steps to achieve an elegant and stylish look for your abode. Read on to hear our expert tips for installing the surface in your home.
Accurate measurements
To ensure you don’t fork out too much cash on your new floors, you need to work out how much of the surface you’re going to need.
Measure both the width and length of every room in the house you’re planning to fit with laminate floors, then multiply the two figures together. The sum you’re left with should be exactly how many square metres or square feet of flooring you require for the space.
However, if your maths isn’t quite up to scratch and you’re worried you might be caught short, add ten per cent to the amount as this will cover any waste. Meanwhile, if the laminate arrives in packs, as they do with retailers like UK Flooring Direct, you could divide the number you’ve written down by the number of packs to be left with your actual quantity.
Sub-floor surface preparations
There are some important preparations you’ll need to make before fitting the flooring, one of which is making sure the surface that is being covered is completely flat.
If you attempt to install laminate floors on ground that is not level or even slightly wonky, the floorboards will end up creaking and this problem is difficult to put right. By using a leveller, you’ll be able to determine which parts of the surface are straight and which aren’t.
Underlay
Once you have readied the sub-floor surface for the flooring, the next step is to install the underlay. Firstly, work out how much you need and ensure you’ve chosen the right type, before checking everything is dry and clean.
Then, you’re ready to install it. If you’re laying the laminate floor down over a concrete slab, the underlay needs to be taped down using packaging tape so that it extends up the wall by at least five cm, but with wood flooring, you won’t have to do either of these things.
Installation
No matter what species of laminate flooring you’ve opted to purchase, when it comes to actual installation, the process is always the same.
And it couldn’t be easier – firstly, you’ll need to stand at one end of the room and start placing spacers along each wall until you reach the other side.
Then, put the first laminate floorboard on the ground and add another piece to the right, lining up the short ends together. Continue doing this until you finish the first row and cut the last piece by measuring the distance between the last piece and the wall.
Once this is done, subtract six mm and cut the material. Then use the leftover piece to start the next row of floorboards and repeat the process until the entire surface is covered, remembering at the end that the entire length must be angled and pushed forward so the groove connects to the groove of the first row.