Installing Laminate Flooring For The First Time // Home Renovation

what's going on everybody I'm Johnny Brook welcome back to another crafter workshop video today I've got kind of the first home renovation project on this channel I'm replacing all of the carpet in this room with this really nice laminate flooring and this is basically gonna become my final photo wall where I get all those thumbnails from my projects all those final shots and I am super excited to have a room dedicated to this so hopefully you guys enjoy this one let's go ahead and get started with the bill the first step was any flooring installation project is going to be cleaning out the room and this particular room had accumulated a good bit of stuff over the last couple years we've lived in this house luckily my buddy Alex came over to help out with this step and it went pretty quickly once the room was empty we could get to ripping up the carpet and there were two different types of carpet going from the main room to this bedroom so I first needed to cut the seam between those two pieces so I didn't tear up the carpet that we were keeping in the main room after cutting the seam I could just pull back on the carpet and start ripping it up this carpet was attached with tack strips around the perimeter of the room so it required some force to pull up but eventually it started coming up once I got a section going I cut it into a strip to make it more manageable and carpet is extremely heavier really a lot heavier than you expect so it makes it a lot easier to move out of the room if it's in smaller chunks like this I've rolled up each strip as I cut them and took it outside as we went and we just kept repeating this process with the carpet and the pad underneath until the room was completely empty and then I could move on to removing the tack strips and these things are kind of a pain in the butt but there's a method to removing them that makes things a lot easier I actually picked up this method from my buddy Bob over it I like to make stuff he has some really great flooring installation videos on other types of flooring you should definitely go check those out but anyway that trick was removing tack strips efficiently is to hit your pry bar underneath each of the nails that's holding down the tack strip but only just enough to loosen it if you actually pry up on the strip it has a tendency to splinter into a bunch of pieces which makes cleanup a lot more challenging and it's not always going to come off perfectly depending on how the nails respond but you can definitely move a lot faster if you avoid prying and focus on just popping the nails out you can see here how quickly it goes and how easy it is to clean up when the strip comes off in one piece once all the tack strips were up I could then vacuum the entire room making sure all of the little nail it held down the tax strips were gone if any of these little things end up underneath the flooring it will be really obvious after installation so be really careful and thorough here next I could start adding the underlayment and since I'm using pergo flooring I went with pergo underlayment as well and it was really easy to work with when installing laminate on top of a concrete slab your underlayment needs to have some kind of vapor barrier which this one does to lay the underlayment I just added a strip cut it to length tucked it under the baseboard and then moved on to the next row and luckily this stuff was the perfect length to cover two rows per pack of underlayment so this made things really easy this stuff also already had an adhesive strip attached so I could just attach the strip's to each other without the need for any underlayment tape and the main area of the room was really easy but things got a little bit more tricky when I got to the closet but I just took my time did a bunch of test fitting and eventually got it pretty much perfect once all the underlayment was installed I could move on to actually adding the flooring alright so now that the room is all cleaned up and we've got all this underlayment down we can get to finally actually putting in this flooring it it should go pretty quickly these first couple rows I think are gonna be a little bit more tricky just because they're not gonna be weighted down and attached to a lot of other things so they're gonna have a tendency to slide around and that kind of thing I bought this kind of kit it had some spacers it had some tapping blocks and it had a pull bar three things that you're definitely gonna need to probably good to go ahead and get a kit like that all the link in the video description below so what I'm gonna do here is go ahead and cut off this end over at the Microsoft and then I'm also going to rip off the tongue on these inside edges here on this first row at the table saw and then the final thing we're gonna want to do before we move over to the shop is measure the length of the last board in this row so that way I can go ahead and cut that to length before ripping the tongue off of it so that I can then use that cut off in my next row to get that nice staggered joint so let's go ahead and lay these out and then we can get that measurement and then we can move into the shop so for the first row I needed to cut off the tongue on the short edge of the first board as well as rip off the tongue on all the boards on the first row now before doing that I marked a line on the last board in the first I used my miter saw to cut all the boards to linked on this project but a circular saw and speed square would also work just fine realistically these cuts don't need to be perfect since they're gonna be covered up by quarter round trim anyway after cutting the short tongue off the first board and cutting the last board to lengthen the miter saw I ripped the tongue off of all three of the boards from the first row at the bandsaw and as you might notice I actually got this backwards ripping off the groove instead of the tongue and this caused a ton of frustration when trying to install those first few rows but once I figured out my error I started over with fresh boards and this made my life a whole lot easier with my corrected boards I could get to assembling the first few rows and to attach the board's I first lifted the board with the tongue facing the groove and pushed it in until it was fully seated and then I could push down on the board to lock the board's in place next I added the next board again seating that long edge first and then tapping the board into place to seat the short edge and with a few boards added I could add a box of flooring on top to help keep the board's in place while tapping and I just kept repeating this process for the first two rows and I found it a lot easier to put these together by staggering the board's rather than trying to do one complete row at a time at least for this first pair of rows once I got to the last board in the first row I needed to use a pull bar to pull the board into place since a tapping block wouldn't fit I could then mark the last board on the second row to length and this is really easy to do if you just flip the board around so the grooves are facing each other and this will ensure you have a board at the perfect length with no measuring and you know forgetting your numbers when you're headed out to the miter saw after cutting the piece to lengthen the miter saw I can install it again using the pull bar to fully seated and with those first two rows done things got a whole lot easier since the boards had less of a tendency to slide around I added a third row and then slid all three rows into their final place with the spacer blocks on all three sides of the board's and from there it was just more of the same adding more boards cutting them to length and making sure to stagger those joints so that I didn't have any joints that were closer than 12 inches from each other and I just kept repeating this until I got to my first obstacle doorway and I needed to notch out the board to fit underneath the trim making sure that the edges of the flooring were completely concealed by this trim since I wouldn't be adding cord around to this area before notching out the board I the final length and then made a few marks on the board where I needed to cut it and to cut out the notch I used a jig saw which made really easy work of this process once I cut out the notch I could test fit the board and realized I had once again mixed things up work Irie got a new board off camera and then needed to undercut the trim before installing the board and to do this I used an off cut of the flooring to hold up my flush trim saw and cut away the trim and this results in a perfect fit with almost no gap between the flooring and trim next I could tap the board into place and you'll notice I ended up using an off cut of the flooring on rather than the tapping block in most of these scenarios these tongues are pretty fragile and it's really easy to damage them with a regular tapping block from there I could just continue installing more flooring repeating the steps you've already seen and while I'm installing let's talk about the sponsor of this week's video arrow fastener arrow makes a wide variety of fastening tools including staple guns nailers glue guns riveters and more and I used the arrow PT 18 G brad nailer and arrow Brad nails to install all of the quarter round trim on this build which you'll see later and I have a ton of projects featuring arrow tools coming up including some exclusive projects going up on the arrow site so stay tuned if you'd like to learn more about arrow and their full line of fastening tools and fasteners check out the link in the video description below I just kept installing flooring until I got to my next obstacle transition alright now I've gotten flooring installed up to the first doorway that I'm gonna need to add one of these transition pieces and I know I've already worked on another doorway but that one already has a transition that's going from here in an air-conditioned space out into my garage so it's got more of a kind of weatherproof and insulated strip there so we're going to use this kind of transition over there but here we're transitioning from this laminate flooring to carpet and then here behind me going into the bathroom I'm really transitioning from the laminate to tile so I've got these matching transition strip so go ahead and cut it to length just did that with the miter saw and then the other piece that comes with the kit is this metal strip and this is what actually connects to the subfloor and then the bottom of the transition has a little piece that fits right into this strip once I have that in place then I can go ahead and install the rest of my flooring and add the transition piece well once I'm done with the flooring so let's go ahead and get do it I attach the aluminum train tract and then to continue installing the flooring I needed to install this track so I could know what length boards needed to be in this area so that I could leave the correct expansion gap and the last little bit of flooring to install is always the most tricky you usually have a bunch of stuff to work around in this case I needed to rip the board's width allowing for the correct gap between the tile and the flooring for the transition as well as notching the boards to fit around all this trim once again I just took my time taking a bunch of measurements and eventually got a really nice fit and on this very last board you can see I actually needed to notch out the long edge so that I could fit my pull bar in to seat that board and this actually ended up working out really well with that area of the flooring complete I could go ahead and add the transitions which just snap into place right into those tracks next I could work on the closet which I was honestly dreading for some reason but ended up going really quickly it was just more the same and I finished by ripping the last boards to width to fit the space and with that the flooring was done so all that was left with this install was to add the quarter round trim over that expansion gap around the entire perimeter of the room and since my quarter round came in eight foot lengths and my room is 12 foot wide I needed to join the pieces in the middle of the room to do this I cut a 45 degree miter on each end of the piece one to go into the corner of the room and one for where the two pieces of trim will meet in the center of the room one thing to keep in mind when cutting and installing quarter round is that there's one wider face on the piece and this face needs to be face down on both the miter saw when making the cuts and when being installed in the room after cutting the pieces of linked I installed it with inch and a half long Brad nails making sure to nail into the baseboard and knot in the flooring the whole point of this gap is to allow for expansion and contraction and if you nail directly into the flooring it won't be able to do that once all the trim was installed this install was done all right hopefully you guys enjoyed this one I'm really happy with the way this room came together I think the flooring looks great the gray color on this wall I think is just perfect for what I need it to be and I am just so happy to finally have a space dedicated to this so previously you might have noticed I kind of took all of my final glamour shots and thumbnails outside and it's really hard to control for light and weather when shooting that outside natural light is obviously really nice but to be able to completely control the lighting in this room is going to be super super nice and I'm just really excited so I'm definitely gonna have some more home renovation projects coming up later this fall I'm actually gonna be completely finishing my attic space turning that into a home office for me so stay tuned for that hopefully you guys will enjoy that one if it's your first time the channel go ahead and get subscribed I put out new project videos like this pretty much every week also ring that little notification bell so you don't miss any of my future videos or live streams also all the lists of all the tools and materials I used in the video description below including the exact type of flooring I used in case you guys want to kind of replicate this look and last I have added that YouTube sponsored feature into the channel so if you guys want to support me a little bit further get exclusive live streams and exclusive monthly vlogs you can go ahead and click the sponsor button on this screen or below this video and check out those perks so thanks again for watching everybody and until next time happy buildings

Channel: Crafted Workshop

Views: 5,682,282

Keywords: crafted workshop, workshop, woodworking, diy, howto, how-to, make, maker, build, table saw, festool, powermatic, installing laminate, flooring installation, tongue and groove flooring, home improvement, hardwood flooring, wood flooring, home renovation, pergo flooring, laminate flooring, how to install laminate, installing laminate flooring on concrete, home renovation diy, pergo flooring installation video, pergo flooring installation, pergo flooring review, pergo flooring waterproof

Id: ph5WtpGWReU

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/steel_city89]

Great vid!

You can buy laminate that doesn’t require you to pull them in with a tool, you simply lay it level with the short end and click it down with a soft mallet.

Another tip is to remove the skirting boards and lay the laminate then put skirting back over, you don’t need the little bits of trim that way, but it does take a bit longer to do.

And believe me with a bit of patience anyone can lay laminate, just take your time and dont pay a fortune to have it done.

[u/Ooosmarties]

Dude was wearing safety glasses and flip flops.

[u/Abrham_Smith]

If you plan on doing more laminate flooring, I definitely recommend that you invest in a laminate guillotine. Limits your trips back to the miter saw because you can make them all inside the room. You only need perhaps a jigsaw for more technical cuts.

Next time measure from the center of your room to the walls and figure out exactly how wide your last board will be on each side, that way you don't have a full board on your starting wall and a half board on the ending wall, they will both be the same width.

Looks great for your first time around!

Edit: I should also mention this sweet tool that makes cutting intricate corners and other things a breeze.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E36098/

[u/Berniebiz]

A tip for anyone about to do this is to use a shovel to remove the tack strips. Removed my 400sq ft front rooms in 5 minutes. That was after fiddling with the bedrooms for an hour.

[u/robdon07]

My AC condensate pump went up a couple weeks ago. Water got under the old flooring and just made an all around mess so I tore it up and replaced it with new Pergo. Great job with the vid I think it will give confidence to those who maybe needed a nudge toward the DIY option instead of paying an arm and a leg for professionals, it's defintely doable...idk if you make these vids regularly but refinishing furniture is another diy that woulld make a great vid. It's something we all need at some point

[u/maxwell2112]

Nice video.There's really no need to cut your first row as it will never be seen. As far as removing the molding, it is really easy to do jest make sure you run a razor knife along the top of the molding before trying to break it loose. If you don't it will rip up the wall then you will have to fix and repaint the wall. Iv'e installed miles of this floor and it is really easy to do.

[u/Aikidan]

It’s Shoe molding, rather then Quarter Round molding, if one perpendicular side is smaller than the other. Makes a difference when you buy it and install it.

[u/cberice]

I used laminated flooring and a special paint for ceramic to improve the aspect of our bathroom. This is the result...

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfVjXqmnqGS/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=14zebss9eojyj

[u/Pastel_plants]

Fuck laminate. Never again