How to Install Laminate Flooring | Easy DIY Guide

hi I'm Jeff from Ottawa design & build I'm here to give you a little tutorial on how to install laminate flooring we're talking about a medium density fiber or high density fiber laminate traditionally this came out it looked like a picture of three different pieces of wood it's developed a lot over the years now we've got something that looks like wide plank board flooring now this is a tore Lee's flooring product as a fabulous quality the joints in this click lock together and really tight you won't see gapping over time there's a lot of products on the market a lot of different price ranges anywhere from a dollar square foot up to five or six so you get what you pay for so if you have a 10-year project and you're just looking to make something clean so you can sell your house by all means you know go to the cheaper end but if you're doing a new build like we are we're expecting this floor to last a long time this isn't going to be a 30 to 40 year floor we're also installing a bar on top of it so we can't cut any corners with the quality so since we're not cutting corners of the quality we're also using a high quality under pad this is a very thick piece of rubber it also has a vapor barrier on it it's always that vapor barrier on and really flooring this product here is good for basement floors and residential use if you're bruit laminate flooring and you're in a situation where you're like in a condo or an apartment you have to get a different flooring that kills the sound there's a sound transmission rating on that under pad it's a little more expensive but generally speaking if you go to a wholesaler you can get this kind of product for under 20 cents a square foot it's not a big expense so by all means get the good one if you go to the building store you're probably going to pay three to four times as much but don't ever cheap out okay so the bottom of the pad is the gold side has an adhesive strip so that when you do the next joint you can tape a pad on to this little bit of leftover foil so always install the pad in the right direction so that you can add the next layer [Music] basically we just roll it out and cut it to fill the space now this room is a little dusty so we're going to get some footprints how awesome is that all right so the way I do it is I just push it to the wall find my mark roll it back to me cut both directions and get that out of my way I'll just fire it underneath the drywall for now so it holds it all right and we're good to go so the basic tools that we need for this project are pretty simple you should have it with tape measure pencil a hammer this is what most people don't have the cutting tool dun dun dun this is the next generation in laminate floor cutters it's also good for commercial vinyl tile this thing here has an extension on the arm multiplies your leverage so it's it operates like a guillotine principle it's just crushing in the gap and it snatch the board right on the cut line the cool thing about this is that one person can operate this without having to get up or down and it creates no dust this kind of flooring if you're ever work for the before and you're using your saw it's crazy the amount of dust so one of the biggest drawbacks was you always had the cut outside or you had to wear a mask or you just got sick and got a sinus infection and we all learn the hard way but this tool here is worth its weight in gold I think it cost me about four hundred dollars it's been through the mill a few times here still works haven't had the sharpening yet I have nothing bad to say about it I'll give you a demonstration because I'm going to need a little piece to start with here we go so when I'm starting my floor I want to cut just the first piece about five or six inches off done okay and I'm going to use this as my nailing block okay because you're going to find it installing this flooring is not an easy task we are going to go from left to right if you're doing this alone I'm going to recommend that you start the first and second row with a half offset so cut your board in advance no need to measure okay there we go just like any other kind of flooring you want to have pay attention to your aging which is where your joints are meeting up now this locks in nice and simple right he's lining it up there to give it a wiggle clicks in place you heard the click that's the sound of a good insulation you can see we've got this installed so that slides underneath the baseboard we don't want to start against the wall right away I want to start out here going to show you why if you're working alone or even if you have somebody with you this can be real tricky you'll see a lot of guys do this they'll put that side down there this also clicks together all right and I'll drop it in and then they go to the next piece and they're in a bit of a conundrum because this type of flooring is not a lay lock system I can't just drop that in place you'll see that there's a Tong here so the way that this works is that this piece actually has to be backed off a little bit you've got to force it down and then you got to drive it into the gap from the other side when you're starting off by yourself trying to keep things square having this board here is in your way so don't do that keep that out of your way you want to work back and forth on your first and second row we're going to cross your room important to note traditionally you'll find that people like the look of the flooring better there's that click again if you're running the grain along the longest wall in the room know that piece that I cut off to the very beginning I'm going to lock that in now I take my hammer boom where that is a really nice tight fit never going to have a problem now I take this board the benefit of this tongue and groove action is that it actually locks from both different directions ok so you get it nice and tight put your weight on it there we go beautiful alright so now we've gotten to the end of this wall I want to take my knife out and trim this on their pad back a little bit this is just to keep the noise down okay so it doesn't matter if it goes all the way to the wall or not it's okay to be shy and this here is what we do this isn't facing the same direction when you want to measure your cut you want to do this by eye alright so read the end we want to get our piece make sure the tongue room is all facing the same way then take it and turn it around so now you're going to be measuring the actual gap with the same piece of what this going to be cut and installed there and it's nothing that's more than the square you want to take the shortest or where the contact is at the wall and Mark the floor to be cut within a quarter of an inch of that now because we're using 3/4 baseboard we have a lot of mercy I mean I can have this floor come almost an inch from the wall and it's still going to get covered by the till I'm done with all my trim but for good measure I like to leave about a quarter of an inch there for expansion contraction take it over to the cutter put your mark right where the blade comes down crush it and now instead of trying to hammer it in like this you can just drop that in this piece however is going to be a little trickier because you have no room to get the hammer from the end so we have to hammer this direction this time now every time you cut a piece start the next row with the off cut in your product save your time here's our piece flip it around make contact with the wall come back here measure cut and be careful all the time not to chip the corners you chip the corners that piece is no good to you nobody wants an ugly piece of floor in the middle of the room now like I was trying to show here I can't just drop that in I don't have the room for a hammer what I can do is the same concept from this side I can drop that to there okay don't your good note when you're working with us flooring keep an eye on the corners on the backside if you have debris and it gets caught in these gaps and you force it in you're going to be breaking everything apart your floor will open up on you so put this down lay it in place now we take our hammering block put your weight on this other piece of wood or this laminate see that that's not going in very nice up against the wall now after you have about four or five rows done take a minute and pull this forward out from underneath the baseboard and then move your flooring from the other side of the room where you have it stored pile it all up on the floor that'll put enough weight on it that when you're hammering those end pieces in it won't be sliding around anymore and it maintains that gap that you want underneath your floor and around your perimeter try to keep a half inch gap everywhere you go and your floral lasts forever now really all you need to know now because it's going to take about an hour to finish this room not bad no does no mess hardly any garbage it's going to be brand new beautiful so if you've enjoyed this video feel free to contact us write a comment down below if you have any questions hit the like button we'd like to know if you like it and by all means if you haven't subscribed to our Channel please do we've got a lot of exciting things coming up a lot of great material that we've built in our library so have a look at that too thanks for watching

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 3,738,244

Keywords: laminate plank, laminate flooring, flooring, how to install laminate, installing laminate, flooring installation, flooring diy, laminate plank flooring installation, how to install laminate plank flooring, how to install laminate flooring, how to install laminate wood flooring, how to install laminate flooring on wood subfloor, laminate flooring diy, laminate flooring installation, installing laminate flooring, laminate planks, laminate vs tile flooring, diy laminate floor, diy

Id: zsob5-HL-TE

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2017