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Laminate Floor

Does what it says on the tin
UncleEbenezer
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Laminate Floor

#425526

Postby UncleEbenezer » July 7th, 2021, 12:15 pm

Contemplating a laminate floor such as https://www.wickes.co.uk/Navelli-Light- ... 2/p/147692 for my working-from-home office.

It's an attic room, and due to sloping walls coming down low the floor area is much bigger than the usable area. There's quite a bit of heavy stuff up there that would be a problem to move out. Should I be able to get away with moving everything to one side of the room while I do the other, then reversing that?

Also if I do that it makes sense for the laminate to start on the staircase leading up to the attic. Any gotchas to look out for if I put laminate on stairs? The amount of creak I get on them makes me slightly apprehensive over what may emerge on removing the fitted carpet.

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425539

Postby pompeygazza » July 7th, 2021, 12:50 pm

If you try and laminate your stairs it will look rubbish (worse than rubbish, but what i was going to type will get me a ban!),as you'll never get a decent finish where you joint the tread and the riser. Much better to start at the threshold to the room.

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425546

Postby jfgw » July 7th, 2021, 1:09 pm

Moving things around should not be a problem; it is usual to start at a far left corner and do one row at a time.

I have never seen laminate laid onto stairs. I don't know how you could do it both safely and so that it looks ok.


Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425549

Postby bungeejumper » July 7th, 2021, 1:24 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:Any gotchas to look out for if I put laminate on stairs? The amount of creak I get on them makes me slightly apprehensive over what may emerge on removing the fitted carpet.

I have this feeling that you'd be replacing the creak with a tippity-tappity-clackety-clack if you laminated the stairs. :D And it would have to be top quality laminate, because stairs tend to take a bit of a pasting which would quickly go right through some laminates of my past acquaintance. ;)

Rejoice in any blessed opportunity to fix your staircase creak, though! The chances are that you've got a bit of movement in there, probably caused by wood drying out and shrinking, and a handful of decking screws in the right places would soon have everything tight again. The question is, what you'd do after that? If you didn't laminate it, would you want the treads stained, or stripped and waxed, or painted, or re-carpeted? Any but the last option would require you to countersink and fill over your reinforcing screws. Not a difficult job, but not to be forgotten.

BJ

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425556

Postby MyNameIsUrl » July 7th, 2021, 1:58 pm

I agree with the generally negative views of other posters, but if you do decide to laminate the stairs, you may not be aware of products designed to do it relatively neatly - suggest you google 'laminate stair nosing'.

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Laminate Floor

#425589

Postby UncleEbenezer » July 7th, 2021, 3:50 pm

Thanks for the replies. Yes, laminating only to the threshold of the room is certainly an option. There's a doorway (always open), and a landing outside the room with just enough space for a stationery cupboard.

The reason to think about it holistically was in part with a view to removing the divider from the doorway, and running the laminate boards cleanly through it. But that's probably more risk than it's worth just to be a bit swanky. ;)

I tried googling laminate on stairs, and lots of results look good (and yes, they stress the importance of a nose). And - being a lazy bugger - I like the prospect of not having to vacuum the stairs. But certainly it makes sense to start with just the room, then review the look-and-feel of it all.

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425594

Postby 88V8 » July 7th, 2021, 3:59 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:.... being a lazy bugger - I like the prospect of not having to vacuum the stairs.

Leaving aside the fact that wood stairs are slippery... you'll be vacuuming a lot more as bare wood shows every speck of the dust that just sinks unnoticed and unmourned into the carpet.

V8

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425667

Postby bungeejumper » July 7th, 2021, 7:42 pm

Returning to your original question, the laminate boarding in the loft room. I know a few people who've done it really well, and more people who've acted in haste and ended up with terminally creaky boarding. (And I mean LOUD!) One of them in our rental flat, bless him. The poor buggers downstairs weren't too impressed. :(

I've never done any laminate boarding myself, so I won't say much, except that paying attention to the floor level will pay dividends, Use a layer of felt underneath it, and do any packing-out that will help it to lie absolutely flat. (Or it'll creak.) Our otherwise extremely reasonable(**) laminate fitters (from Carpetright) used a special tightly-bonded felt, which was almost as much as the laminate itself, but they tell me that lesser materials are fine.

Basically, the better your laminate sheets clip together, the better for everyone. :lol: If yours are plastic-backed (ours are), they won't shrink as the floor settles in.

BJ

(**) Our fitters charged a flat-rate £180-odd for just about any size of room! They said that once two of them had got into the van and turned up for the morning, clipping the boards and cutting them was the least time-consuming part of the job, so what the hell. It took them about two hours to do an area the size of two ping-pong tables, with cut-outs for washbasin pedestals and a lot of convoluted skirting-board stuff. One of those jobs, like plastering or carpet fitting, that I'm quite glad I didn't try to do on my own when an expert could do it so much better in record-breaking time.

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425697

Postby AF62 » July 7th, 2021, 9:53 pm

I have layed laminate a couple of times, but only in straightforward rooms where it was easy.

Taking the skirting off and refitting it afterwards makes a world of difference to the finish. A good thick underlay makes a huge difference for upstairs rooms - 5mm fibre board not the 2mm thin rolls. Prepare the floor. Any lumps or dips *will* show at the end. Clamps to hold the laminate whilst the glue sets make it far easier.

Don't do the stairs, it will look terrible unless you spend a huge amount of time on it, and you will kill yourself when you slip down the stairs in your socks.

When I had the hall fitted with engineered wood last year, although similar in fitting to laminate I left it to the professionals, and seeing how quickly and easily they dealt with the many corners, I was very glad I made that decision.

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Re: Laminate Floor

#425933

Postby modellingman » July 8th, 2021, 5:39 pm

AF62 wrote:Taking the skirting off and refitting it afterwards makes a world of difference to the finish. A good thick underlay makes a huge difference for upstairs rooms - 5mm fibre board not the 2mm thin rolls. Prepare the floor. Any lumps or dips *will* show at the end. Clamps to hold the laminate whilst the glue sets make it far easier.


It has been a long time since glued laminate has been popular. Most laminate for at least the last 20 years has used click joints which are fitted dry and which can, with care, be taken up and relaid.

The trade-off between skirtings off and skirtings on when fitting is one of looks vs convenience, particularly if it is ever necesary to get access to pipes/cables located under the floorboards. It is a lot easier (and less disruptive in terms of redecoration) to remove scotia (trim) than to remove skirting.

For DIY installation, planning the layout helps to estimate quantities and minimise wastage. It is laid a bit like bricks with overlaps. Halves, thirds or quarter lengths can be used for the overlaps - simply pick whatever minimises wastage according to the room dimension laid along. The general recommendation with traditional floorboards is to lay perpendicular to the floorboards. With sheet board flooring, it matters less. As a general recommendation avoid laying in the direction of a natural walkway - this can result in clicked together boards sliding relative to each other and causing gaps to appear at board ends.


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