all right guys welcome back to another video on today's video i'll be fitting laminate flooring
into our vw caddy maxi i'm filming in here because it's super cold outside and super super windy so
i can't do any filming with talking in near the van just because it's too windy so what i'm going
to do is i'm going to film the whole process and then add a voiceover so what have we got for the
flooring so i picked up this laminate flooring from wix which is 12mm thick and i bought two
packs of it so if you've got a vw caddy maxi you're only going to need two packs as long as
you don't make loads of mistakes so i went for the gray color because that's going to look good
against the white cladding and the gray carpet you've got in there already so it's really simple
to do so obviously you want to have a plywood base flooring which i'd recommend again probably
12 mil thick plywood so you can buy the flooring kits online uh there's a good company on ebay who
do the kits you can just buy the flooring or you can buy a sheet of plywood like we
did and then cut it to fit so i'll show you some clips of how we did that and how to fit it in and
the next process obviously you just want to cut the laminate flooring on top of this so that it
just matches that template and comes up and covers all any little cracks that you might have so what
you want to do is obviously use jigs uh cardboard template or by eye measuring just to make sure you
get the shape right and then put in each plank one by one all the way so it covers up the whole floor
so it says with this flooring you don't need to stick it down however in a van obviously you're
driving along lots of vibrations the suspension is going to bounce around to the floor probably
going to bounce and rattle so i'm going to use wood glue and a load of weights to secure it
down for 24 hours and make sure it's stuck solid to that plywood and obviously you want to make
sure the plywood's solidly stuck down as well because otherwise the whole thing might rattle
so what you want to do is do one plank at a time work all the way across the floor
make sure it's absolutely perfect before you glue it down and then you can take up the floor again
and then when it's all perfect and it all fits then you can glue it down so put the piece in
one by one tongue and groove put it all the way across all the wood glue and then just put a load
of weights on it or something really heavy each plank and weigh that down for 24 hours and then
it'll be nice and solid and that's completely done so let's crack on and get the floor in it
bittersweet and i'm walking slow
fill the afterglow looking for things that i can't control
moment of truth is it going to fit in the hand all right
is she too tight oh yeah she might pop down into it though
because it's a bit thinner isn't it okay i used to go back a bit
overlapping i don't want to trap my fingers
so to begin with you want to get the flooring out of the packaging and measure up in the van
to make sure you have enough flooring to fit the whole surface so we want to do is just roughly
put together the flooring just to make sure that you've got enough pieces to cover the whole floor
once you know how many pieces of flooring you'll need you can start measuring and cutting it into
place so to do this you can do use a contour gauge tool which will help you get the curves of the van
another way to do this which i like to do which is a handy little tip to
get a piece of cardboard and fold it into the curves like i'm doing here
you can then easily mark these curves onto the wood and cut it to
for shapes who can take away the pain i feel the things i haven't done at all i've lost my way
so once you've got the first board in place simply repeat the process
measure the length of board that you need use either the gauge or the piece of cardboard to
get the curve correct cut this and then slot it into place that's the great thing about
using flooring like this is its tongue and groove so each piece will slot into the next
work your way from one side of the van to the other i'm still
i like the taste of it
so an important tip i'd say when doing flooring is make sure you cut the floorboards upside down
so many jigsaws have the blades facing upwards so that creates a rough edge when you're cutting
so if you have the floorboard facing upwards you're going to get a rough
edge on the piece that you're going to see so you turn it upside down
and that means the rough edge is on the floor and you're not going to see that
as you can see i've done most of the boards now and for a little bit like this going against the
wheel box it's a bit of trial and error you know you can measure it and try and get it perfect but
you're trying to get a curve you're trying to get the right angles trying to get the right
measurements so the best way i do is just cut a tiny bit of time it's probably a little bit
slower but as i'm not a carpenter and i'm not an expert so i'll just make sure it fits if it
doesn't fit i'll go back shave another mill off go back again eventually until i get a nice tight fit
so another tip to get a really nice tight flooring to the back of the band you've got the plastic
trim this has got a tapered edge onto it so the flooring when you cut it will have a 90 degree
cut obviously if you want this to be nice and tight against the plastic trim you're gonna have
to create a tapered edge as well so you have to cut along the back of the floorboards create that
tapered edge an angle and then it will slot in and match the tape of the plastic trim i didn't really
show this but that's how i've got a nice tight finish at the back of the van against the trim
as you can see it's quite simple doing the flooring it's quite time consuming but that's
like anything to try and get it right just make sure you measure twice and cut once you know i've
learned that the hard way so yeah just make sure you measure accurately and get a nice clean cut
so guys i finished fitting the flooring and it looks great it all fits in really well
so what i need to do now is i need to take all the flooring back up
i need to number it so i know which order it goes back in and then i can put the wood
glue on and re-lay it and add the weights on top and glue it all in place and then it'll be done
there's a few little bits you can add on so you can add a bit of gunk around the edges
like a little bit of mastic just to fill in any cracks you might have and then i'm probably
going to put a little bit edging on here but yeah let's carry on so the next step is take up all the
floorboards and number them this is so that you can then put them back into place in the right
order because all the floorboards look similar and you're not gonna know where they're gonna go
unless you lay them out on the floor or something like that so the easiest way is
to number them and then you're gonna know exactly where they go i think for me it was one to sixteen
once you've completed this the next step is then to use the wood glue to stick it down in place
so i put on plenty of wood glue onto the plywood and then simply put floorboards on top of this
and hold it down with weights when you're completed so do one by one putting them into place
move on to the next one add the wood glue down and so on and so on when they're all completed
then add the weights on top and weight it down leave for 24 hours that'll be a really solid floor
most people use screws but this way you're going to get a better finish you're not
going to have any screws you're not going to have any rattles the floor is not going
to come up and it's going gonna be nice and solid and it's gonna last a very long time
there you go guys i've taken the weights off the floor it's all glued down now and
it looks absolutely amazing i really like this color and i'm really glad i went for
the thicker flooring the 12 mil it's really solid flooring so it's a lot better so the
vans looking absolutely amazing it's really coming together the gray against the white
and with the gray carpet as well it's looking really really good so thanks again for watching
don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you have any questions or you're not sure how to
do something like always drop me a question in the comments below and i'll see you next video