you've chosen the right video to watch if you're going to be installing
laminate flooring in your house
I'm gonna run through from start to finish on how to get your laminate floor installed it's an easy product to work
with you need minimal tools and you'll be able to do this at home ending up
with a really good looking floor. What we're going to do first is clean the
concrete floor, give the floor a really good clean, scrape off any debris
give it a sweep and a good vacuum, ready for installation.
Check that the floor is flat and level, a depression of 3mm over the span of a meter is
about the maximum you could get away with any more than that on a concrete
floor and you'd need to use a self leveling compound in order to level the
floor again, conversely any high parts will need to be ground down.
On a timber floor if you've got maybe nail heads, screw heads or endgrain sticking up, that needs to be sanded
flat, nails punched, if you've got any squeaks in your timber floor now's the time
to put some extra screws and get rid of those squeaky floor boards.
So to measure your room, measure the width times the length and that's the area. So we've got 3 mtrs x 3 mtrs
we've got to allow 5% of wastage, so we've gotten enough
packets of laminate flooring to cover our 9 square mtrs, plus our 5% wastage
plus if we have any damaged pieces or we've cut some wrong we're going to have enough
we've left them in the room here for a few days to
acclimatize it's a good idea but it's not vital. What is vital... you've got to do
this don't lay your floor right up to where it bumps your skirting or your
plaster board walls or benches or tiles, It expands and it shrinks with
temperature and humidity changes and you've got to leave a minimum of
10 mm around the perimeter of your floor so that it can stretch and shrink
with the changes and temperature and so on that gap can be covered up by a
bit of quarter round or some skirting later on, as your rooms get bigger that
measurement also increases. Check the manufacturer's specifications for how to
calculate how much expansion space you're going to need for your product
and for the size of your room now I've been caught out before I've laid
laminate flooring right up to the edge right from wall to wall without that
expansion gap and the floor actually buckled in the middle I had to take the
skirting off and cut the flooring down so that it can lay flat again don't
waste your time doing that just make sure you leave that 10 mm around your
whole perimeter 10 mm minimum, little 10 mil spaces at the minimum all the way
around so as you lay your floor you're guaranteed that you're going to have
that expansion space, you've got to do it!
now we're actually gonna lay this underlay.. this foil backed under... what do they call it?
underlayment, Underlayment!
surely not! yup, that's a word.
now let's get this underlayment down it is 2 mm foam for a little bit of
cushioning, it's mold and mildew resistant, it is foil backed so that
stops the moisture coming up through the concrete, this one has an adhesive strip
on one side that's gonna go against the wall and then it's got like a little...
can you see that there? it's got a little bit of extra foil there and that is for the
next row of foam to go over top of, anyway you'll see what I mean when we
start laying. So figure out which way your laminate flooring is going to be
laid and we're going to put that underlayment down in the same direction
so that parallel the reason for that is when you're working on it and laying
your floor here your boots and your knee pads can tear the underlayment if you're
going perpendicular you're gonna have the whole floor
laid out with this foil back foam it's not very strong you're going to end up
ripping it and damaging it and moving it around this way you've just put one
sheet of foil back underlayment down and start laying your floorboards on that
then you can move back and do the same thing again.
I find you need to sometimes, just pop a little bit of tape down
like that, just to hold the ends down
I like to lay a whole length of flooring at a time this rooms just
over two planks in length so you can see how that last piece is going to be
really short, it's not ideal a minimum length of about 300 mm is recommended
to combat this you can start out with a cut plank at the other end but don't
worry it's not going to go to waste because you're off cut will be used
later all right let's see if I can talk fast enough to keep up with this guy now
we can start to lay our flooring down remembering to allow for expansion I
used some little timber packers in a few places along the wall just to make sure
now to calculate that expansion gap needed I work on 1.5 mm per
mtr of flooring, so in a 3 mtr room it would be 3 x 1.5 mm
try and stagger your joins it helps the floor to lock nicely together and it
looks more natural to because you don't notice a pattern and when you're getting
close to that edge of your underlay, layout the next roll foil side down
because it's a moisture barrier use the double sided tape attached to it stick
it down to the overlapping part of the first underlay and continue to lay down planks
so we need to cut a piece for here, this is how the planks are sitting
so what we do is turn it around 180 degrees,
where these boards intersect is where you're going to make your cut, and just make sure you know
which side is your waste or which side your saw blade wants to be of that cut
okay, an easy way to join these lengths of flooring together
click them in end to end or join them end to end. just move them into position
and then tilt the boards up...
just be careful of this edge along here that you don't damage it
to engage the 'Forma-Lock' tilt the end of one plank up slide the two planks together at this
point you can adjust the boards so they line up along the edges perfectly once
you're happy that it's in place lower the plank down and that is locked in
place I found it easiest to join all lengths end to end
then join this new row to the previously laid planks
to join a new row of planks slide it into position, slightly lift them press them together
and then lower it down. Sometimes you may come across a bit of a damaged piece, just
make sure that when you join your pieces together you don't have any little bits
left in there any damaged pieces you may be able to just pick off with your nail
or run a chisel along the end just to remove that waste
Floor looks good!
thanks for watching guys hopefully this video was helpful if
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if there's anything I've missed or anything you want me to elaborate on any
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to answer them hit that subscribe button and join me as I do other projects
around the home like these ones all right I'll see you next time bye