Tips on how to set up your floors for laminate

Tips on how to set up Your Floors for Laminate Lately laminate flooring happens to be preferred by many households. There are various reasons for this, particularly because laminate flooring is simple to sustain and also less expensive than real wood floors and can look more appealing compared to vinyl floors. In case you are installing laminate floors then it is very important to learn how to prepare your floors for laminate flooring.

Preparing the floor Right before you prepare the floor you will have to remove the current flooring.

Any old carpet or vinyl floors must be pulled up. Make sure to take off the tack strips around the perimeter of the room. Scraping the floor might necessary to remove any padding left stuck to it. After this it is best to give the whole floor area a good clean, if possible with a reliable vacuum cleaner. With any kind of dips, it is essential to level them out, when operating a concrete slab a proper self-leveling compound can be skimmed over it to get your floor in the right condition for a great home improvement. In case you have a plywood sub-floor, then this will need to be repaired.

At this point you will have to take out the base-boards. If you do this properly you might be able to preserve these for re-use. Use a coping saw to cut off the bottoms of door jambs and case openings. Based on the thickness of the laminate and padding you are using you will have to leave an appropriate space for doors to open smoothly without adhering. It is better if the pad is thicker despite the fact that it is more expensive.

Installation To begin with, roll out the underlayment padding, making sure the pieces are connected combined with wide and clear plastic tape. Depending on what kind and brand you have bought, the laminate flooring can be able to connect in many different ways. Laminate floor usually snaps or clicks together, making it essentially a simple and straightforward part of the installation task. Since laminate flooring is a floating floor, it does not connect to the house but just to itself; hence

it’s advisable to leave at least a quarter inch clearance between the laminate and the wall of the room where you are placing the new floor.

As you go along, carefully use a mallet and pull bar to snug the floor up. Look out for doorways, as this is where things could get challenging. Often a utility knife can sort this out by cutting off the snapping connections on the neighboring planks for it to simply slide in place together. Some wood glue here might be useful as well.

Finish up by re-using the base-boards you carefully removed earlier, that were hopefully not damaged in the process. If you cannot re-use the base-boards, then cut and install some new ones. Make sure to miter and caulk all the necessary joints on the base boards, and tend not to nail them into the blanks as this is a floating floor. Now you are done keep in mind the laminate floor will need some level of care, although it is very low maintenance.