How To Install Laminate Flooring

[Music] thank you hey guys in today's video I'm going to be showing you how to install laminate flooring all right so installing laminate flooring is very simple it's a floating floor which means there's no adhesives no Staples no Nails none of that the pieces click and lock together and afterward you install trim around the perimeter of the room and you're done and that being said though it's also very easy to mess up so make sure you follow these steps and make sure it's done right all right so a couple things before we start number one make sure you clean your floor so the last thing you want is like a little chunk of something that you install the flooring over top of and later when you're done you're walking on your floor and you can feel it kind of Teeter back and forth there's no way to get that out unless you take all the flooring up remove it and reinstall it so big pain so make sure everything is perfectly clean all right number two make sure you check your floor for any extreme dips so no floor is perfect so I'm not talking about the little gradual ones that's not going to really matter it's the extreme low spots that you may have in your floor so what happens is when you install your flooring over top of a really low dip and that's right where a seam lands as soon as someone steps on that there's nothing to support underneath and it's going to snap so your flooring is not going to last very long so make sure you check all those spots so if you're installing flooring over top of concrete you can use self-leveling concrete just to kind of fill that little void if it's over a wood floor if it's not too crazy I like using like an underlayment like a thick Vapor Barrier just to Pat out that little section so make sure your floor is completely flat and completely supported underneath the seams number three laminate flooring expands and contracts so make sure you bring it into the room that it's being installed in at least two to three days before you actually start cutting and installing it so if you buy it from a really cold Warehouse where it's being stored you bring it into a really warm room and to start cutting and installing it it will mess with the actual installation so make sure you take care of that all right so the next thing I want to talk about are vapor barriers and under layman so when to use them when not to use them you always need to use them if it's a high moisture area such as a basement so today I'm going to be using a two in one underlayment it provides moisture protection as well as cushioning so you don't need to install this if you're installing the flooring on the second floor of your house directly onto the plywood subfloor I still like to use it it adds a little more cushion to it and it just has a better feel when you're walking on it that's my opinion I am going to be using this stuff today because I'm going directly over concrete I do want to mention the flooring that I'm installing today actually has a built-in Vapor Barrier on the actual flooring itself I'm still going to be using the underlayment for the cushioning aspect because the cushion actually takes out the minor imperfections that you may have in the floor just the small ones not those dips that I was talking about before but it does disguise a lot of those and it just has a better feel when you're actually walking on the floor so now I'm going to show you actually how to install that all right so we're about to start rolling out our first row of underlayment very simple process all you want to do is take the roll roll up all the way down to the end of the room cut it when you bring the roll back to start your second row I want you to peel off the film there's a little sticky backing on one end of the underlayment when you overlap your second row to your first row of underlayment that sticky backing is going to stick to the first row and actually adhere to it it's not the best but it's better than nothing so any spots that are kicking up on you you can tape down and just keep moving forward so everything is nice and flat when you actually go to start installing the flooring all right so we're getting ready to start laying our first row the one thing you guys have to figure out now is which direction you want to run your flooring so typically you want to run the longest length of the room for example in this case I have 12 feet by 10 feet so I'm actually going to run the flooring this way and work my way down so another thing to note when you start installing the floor you want the groove to always face you so here's a little scrap so you can see it a little easier this is the groove right here and this is the tongue so what you want to do lay the flooring down like this when the groove faces you that next row the tongue fits into the groove and then you snap it down and lock it into place actually the first piece you want to cut is right here you want to cut this tongue off right here so you have a nice Square Edge so when that goes against the wall you're good to go as long as you keep the correct spacing so let's talk about spacing really quick if you're installing this floor in the summer chances are your flooring has reached the maximum length and it's it can't really expand anymore so your Gap can be quarter inch 3 8 somewhere around there if it's the winter time most likely it's you know as small as it can get so your Gap can be a little bit bigger 3 8 to a half inch look at the direction see what your specific flooring calls for uh in my case it's right there right in the middle of 3A so and we are at room temperature here so my spacing is actually going to be 3 8 but do what works for you and depends on what time of year you're actually installing the floor so let's cut this first piece foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] today with a chop saw but if you don't have a chop saw you can use the circular saw jigsaw any one of those is fine chop saw is the quickest but if you're doing this one project and you don't want to buy this uh and you have a circular saw available you could just use that perfectly fine as long as your cuts are straight you're good to go foreign cut uh one thing I do want to mention is I for the first few rows I'm actually going to keep this tight to the drywall here once the rows become stable enough so there everything's running pretty straight and we're in a good good Groove I'm going to pull these back a little bit and give myself some spacing here it's just a little easier to keep it tight to the wall at first while you're you know pushing everything and everything's kind of becoming a little more stable three or four rows in it's going to be stable enough to where you can actually pull this away get your spacing uh and be good to go in terms of installing the rest of the flooring always keep in mind though I still want you guys to do the spacing here that's very very important so if this flooring is tight to the wall here and you get down and you make that one tight the floors will Buckle when it expands so make sure that you always have the spacing right over here on the sides because if you don't when you start cutting those other rows it's going to mess up the national sizing of the flooring and it's not going to turn out that great all right so the next board you want to install you want to take the tongue and slip it into the groove you want to go about a 20 degree angle or so make sure this is flush and keep it tight and it falls right into place right here all right so we've reached the other side of the room so the next piece that we're going to install is actually a cut so now I'm going to show you how to measure that for your spacing all right so I'm going to go all the way to the wall and to this point right here we have 50 and 3 8 so I did mention that I was going to do a 3 8 Gap so what we want to do is cut our piece to 50 inches all right so when you go to stick your tape on the piece to measure don't hook the tongue that's not where we measured from so the tongue is actually going to be buried so we measured from the flooring itself so you want to hook right on here on this little Edge and our measurement is 50 inches you want to make a little Mark right at 50. foreign so we're about to start our second row a couple things I want to mention really quick when you cut the last piece in your first row the scrap usually you can bring over and start your next row with as long as it fits into these rules the piece can't be any less than eight inches and the seams can't be any less than 12 inches apart so normally you're able to do that technique I can't do that here because my cut off was only a couple inches so um that's not the worst thing in the world so that kind of puts the bowl in our court so by following those specific rules there I'm going to cut my piece 34 inches uh right here it could be whatever you want as long as it follows those rules uh 34 inch piece puts my seam 16 inches away from the first row so that is perfectly fine my biggest thing is when you're cutting the seams and staggering them I want you to be very conscious of being sporadic with them so if you can see an actual pattern in the seams that you're cutting the floor it'll be fine but just aesthetically if people can pick up you know those seams in the floor it's not the best look so try to be as sporadic as possible all right so we have our next piece cut to size I cut it to 34 inches one thing that's extremely important that I want you guys to always pay attention to is the direction and the way the floor is being laid so we made our first row we know that the groove is facing us so when we lay our second row we want the tongue to slip into the groove so you always start from the left and move your way to the right so with that being said when you cut this piece you need to cut the left side off just like this so the next piece can actually Connect into this side here if you cut the wrong side this piece cannot be used in this spot so always be aware of that also too always check for any chips or imperfections in the pieces so if you just start laying the floor and you're not looking at everything and you get to the middle and there's a chip in one and you don't see it and you keep moving along at the end of the project if you go back and look look and see that chip in the middle it there's no way to get that out without taking out all the floors so make sure you're very conscious over that so so when you install these this each and every row you want to lay this piece down here just like this and you want to stick the tongue into the groove and what I want you to do is make sure your spacing is good on the side here and I want you to just push that in you'll feel a little click and that'll go down just like that make sure your seam is always very tight it's very easy for you to start rolling and you know this one's not tight and then your next row is you know another 16th Gap you don't want that you want everything to be super tight and once you get three or four rows in and you do that double check and everything's you know super tight then you're good to go and then you can kind of run with it then you have a nice stable floor to actually start working with so but the second and third you know row is really difficult to work with you have stuff sliding around so just be very conscious over that all right depending on what type of flooring you're actually installing there's a couple different ways that they actually connect with each other the first way is just like you saw in the last piece the tongue slips into the groove you want to slide it over until it hits that last piece right next to it you want to push that whole piece down and then you want to tap where the two seams meet with a rubber mallet and that will actually lock them into place the style that I actually have which I'm going to show you in a second how to actually install it is same Concepts you take this piece take the tongue slide it into the groove you want to slide it all the way over until the tongue of this new piece hits the existing piece here you want to push the whole piece down so it locks on the long Edge and then what you're going to do you're going to take a little block place it on the end take your rubber mallet and tap the block over so the piece that you're currently installing slides into the piece that you just did and that's what locks the tongue into the groove so I'm going to show you what that looks like now all right so you want to take this piece put the tongue into the groove do your little angle here I want you to slide it all the way over until the tongue hits right here then I want you to push this flooring down lock this into place just like that now you see this Gap right here we're going to close that right now so I'm going to take my block and a rubber mallet tap the other side and keep in mind I have a spacer all the way at the end of this row so the whole flooring can't slide back and forth so we're going to take the block and smack this in to lock it into place foreign that seam is that's exactly what you want it's tight everywhere right here and now we are ready to do our next piece so here's the little block right here that I just did you put it right on here and you tap going this way and make sure that you have a spacer down at the other end so the whole flooring doesn't shift all the way down it'll stop at the spacer and then you're good so I'm going to show you how to do this last cut piece all right so we have our piece cut same concept that you just saw on the last piece you want to stick this in slide it all the way until it hits that tongue and you want to push this in just like that perfectly tight here now we just got to close that Gap now this is the block that we just used to smack this other piece in obviously it's not going to work here so what we're going to do is grab a pull bar so this is just the bar with a little angle on it with a little flare at the end that you can actually stick this in and what you want to do is tap right into here and that pull bar will tighten up that seam right here so everything is super tight on this Edge and this edge here and you're all set with this so that's the concept in the middle of the field you are going to use this block to tap the seams and just be really careful of this finished Edge it's really easy to slip and actually chip your piece um but the block is meant for the field and right when you hit the ends you're going to use the pull bar [Music] all right so we're five rows in this is a really good time to stop and kind of show you what mine looks like so we're at a point now that I have enough rows in where everything's locked in really tight I want you to check your seams I want you to check here I want you to check your joints right over into here everything should be super tight everything looks good right here uh I mentioned before I had this whole thing pushed up against the wall it's just a little easier to work on here now that we have you know we have our stable uh flooring section right here I actually want to pull this away from the wall a little bit uh you can actually use your pull bar here and right over here get it in that little Groove and just kick it out a little bit and I want you to get one of your spacers in here push it right in here you can pull this out a little bit more as much as you need right over here that's pretty good nice one kind of put a couple down the line so we have one here I'm gonna have to pack them out a little bit depending if the walls in or out whatever you got to do perfect here you keep moving down the line right here we have our pull bar now another thing too so I'm going to pull this out equal for right now right so we have this I'm gonna put this right here maybe I'll do one more right here space that all right so [Music] another thing I want you to do too I want you to check the distance from wall here and the wall right to here it doesn't have to be perfectly dead on but I want you to try to get it as close as possible now is the time you're not very far into this you can actually shift this whole section still so I did somewhat of an even spacing here away from the wall if one needs to be a little closer than the other just to you know get it a little bit closer so you end relatively with a you know somewhat straight piece at the end Now's the Time to adjust it to do so um if everything looks good you can just keep rolling on your other cuts and uh keep following that same process I'll show you a couple close-ups of how they actually connect together I know it's kind of tough to see from the camera like with that wide angle so I'm gonna get some close-ups and hopefully uh won't be too bad for you guys all right [Music] foreign [Music] all right we made it to the end we're at that last part where we're gonna have to start ripping the flooring that's up against the wall so let me show you what to do next all right so I may have a little bit of a different situation than you guys you might be at the end of your run and it's just one straight rip going across uh I actually have a doorway so I'll show you how to tackle that um so what we have here is we have a rip that goes down here and then you have a doorway right here there's going to be a bullnose on the ends and then which drops down into the other floor and then we're just going to finish our rip right there so next thing that we have to do is get our measurements so remember same rules still apply you still have to be a quarter inch or 3 8 away from the wall so our numbers are going to be what we got here we have three and five eighths and then over here we have three and three quarters it looks like so we are probably gonna do what let's do three and three eighths so that's a good medium uh yeah that'll give us three Ace gap on the one side and a quarter inch on the other uh one thing I just want to note too if I start with a full right here the full is going to end somewhere in this area here which allows me to put another full right here which would travel over to this side so I usually don't like any seams here it's not a big deal if you do have one uh but I'd rather just have one solid piece it's just a little easier and then you can connect another solid piece here which um runs right into the bull nose trim which I'll show you in a second now in terms of cutting this piece I'm actually going to use a table saw you can use a circular saw jigsaw anything you want say a table saw is the the fastest um but uh you know use whatever you have all right so when you go mark this piece to cut it what I want to remind you is I don't want you to hook the tongue right here I want you to hook the finished edge here and that's where our 3 8 comes into play so um yeah make sure that's really important so if you're using a table saw and you're ripping this to three and three eighths don't set the table saw to 3 and 3 8 because this tongue is going to ride against the fence too and it's going to add an eighth of an inch so if you are using a table saw I want you to set the table saw to three and a half by setting it three and a half it'll make this this part will be ripped three and a half here and then when this gets buried your actual piece turns into three and three a so just a reminder principal here let me get this locked in put your spacer at the end right here now you're going to take your pull bar let's give it a couple taps all right foreign we have our nice spacing here and this thing is very tight we're good to go here it's ready now we're ready for the next piece all right so here's the next piece right here so I figured I would cut it and show you exactly what I did because it's a little difficult to explain but pretty much I used the piece that we just installed as a base so what you want to do is go off of here still keeping with your same spacing technique that I showed you same thing here you go off from here to here and then I want you to butt your tape to here and run all the way down and get this measurement here and then measure this and then after you mark it I actually cut this out with a jigsaw so I cut all those measurements here and then same principle of those terms of installation so we're gonna fit this in knock it back in and tighten up this uh joint right here and then we just have one piece left right here before we add this little piece and then the bull nose all right so we have this piece in here I ripped this piece and I installed that the same exact way that I showed you guys how to do this piece here and let me show you what else I did here so I don't know if you guys have any risers on your project most likely it's just one room but if you do um I actually installed this Riser right here and then what we're gonna do we're gonna install our last piece here so he's gonna go in just like this and all I did to measure this one I just measured from this point over to the Riser this point here and then when the bull nose goes on make sure there's a little Gap um just like I left it a little shy over here on both sides so we're good to go there now something that's specific to my job I actually have to install these uh door jambs right here in order for me to show you guys how to do the bull nose so let me do that really quick all right so we got our door jambs in up all the way and the reason why I had to do the flooring first and the door jambs after the flooring I didn't want to do a gap right here so I let the flooring I left the Gap uh between the flooring and the framing that was here and then I could do the jams right on top of this so everything looks tight here um now it's time to measure this piece right here this is the bullnose I actually already have this cut this size is going to be exact because it's a different material this is actually a PVC material and it matches the color of the floor so um I'm gonna cut the exact size here and then we're going to glue it in all right so this is the type of adhesive that I'm going to be using to glue the bull nose down uh you cannot nail the Bold Nose it's not meant for that it's really thin PVC and it's just going to snap on you so it's meant to be glued down uh and then you can use painters tape to actually keep it down until it dries so I use Loctite power grab it's a really good glue don't go cheap on the construction adhesive on this so um it gets a lot of traffic people are going to be stepping on this and there's no nails so make sure you use a good one I also want to mention too when you're actually installing the uh the adhesive on here I want you to stay at least 3 8 back so the last thing you want to do is get it too close to the edge so when you actually push this piece down you don't want it to spill out so make sure you stay far enough back in here load it up here and I like to do this little lip too same principle goes here so make sure um you kind of stay away from this Edge so you don't have any glue spilling out foreign [Applause] to put our piece on we're all glued so what I want to do is start at one ends you don't want to slide it on because you don't want to push the glue around when I go right above and then you push down here good looks good there Perfect all right nice and tight don't have any glue spilling out any on the edges so we're good there we're in here good all right now what you want to do now is grab a roll of painters tape tape this down there we go nice and tight fits foreign I also want to mention that I um use a damp paper towel before I glued everything I just wiped everything down so everything was dust free and that will allow the glue to adhere we are good to go all right guys well that's the end of the video let me give you a tour real quick so you can see how everything turned out so I didn't cover shoe molding and base molding around the perimeter um if you don't have any base just like I do you are going to have to add it if you do have base then you just have to add shoe molding it didn't make much sense for me to do that right now I got a lot of other projects in here I'm doing a bookcase and a desk and stuff so I will do another video on how to trim out a room uh but uh but yeah if you have any questions whatsoever just leave them in the comments and I will get back to you and I really appreciate you guys watching all right thanks foreign

Channel: The Carpentry Consultant

Views: 124,207

Keywords: Dewalt, construction, renovation, carpentry, carpentryforbeginners, carpentrytipsandtricks, carpentry101, carpentrywork, carpentrybasics, carpentryworkshop, carpentryhacks, carpentryprojects, carpentrytricks, carpentrycourse, carpentryskills, carpentrybusiness, carpentryandbuildingconstruction, carpentryandwoodworking, carpentryandconstruction, diy, tipsandtricks, remodel, handy, contractor, homeimprovement, tattoos, flooring, floatingfloor, laminateflooring, hardwoodflooring, clickandlock, pergo, tongueandgroove

Id: PCmVOrATvjQ

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022