Project 4: Laying Laminate Flooring (part 1)

One of the most important things at the start of every project is making sure you have the right supplies. This post will go over what we had to buy for this project and where we got it.

When we bought the house, we knew the ugly blue carpet would have to go, however, we thought the white carpet in the living room and formal dining room would stay. When the foundation work was over and the formal living room's carpet was ruined, we knew we had to replace it. We decided if we were already were replacing the flooring in all the bedrooms, the hall way, and the formal living room, we might as well replace the carpet in the dining room as well. Our floorplan is very open and I wanted they spaces to feel connected.

After spending a lot of our renovation money fixing the foundation and pipes, we needed to find the most cost effective option for new flooring. Originally I assumed the cheapest option would be carpet. So I headed out and started pricing out everything. I was shocked at how expensive carpet is, even the so-low-end-you-will-have-to-replace-in-five-years carpet. While I was surprised at the cost, I was also a little happy because this meant that putting down laminate (my preference) might actually be the best option. 

So, I started hunting for laminate. The cheapest option I found was the stuff they sell at IKEA. It is $1.15/sq foot and I believe it is 5mm thick. This isn't very thick, as far as laminate goes, but it looked like it held up nicely to in-store traffic so I thought this was the best option. I knew I would have to buy the moisture barrier and padding to go under it, so really the price is more like $1.65-$1.75/sq foot.  Here is a picture from their website to show you what it looks like.

I was all set to buy the IKEA laminate when my good friend Claire told me Lumber Liquidators was having a really great sale. So, I headed out to check out their options.

Turns out they had a really nice selection of 12mm laminate for only $1.89-$1.99/sq ft. It comes with the padding attached, which would save us a lot of time.  Here is what their selection looked like:

I quickly found three different options that I liked and took home the samples to see what they looked like in the house. 

Two of the samples had high gloss finishes. This means the floor shows dirt sooner, but the finish also makes the flooring look deeper/richer when it is clean. The third sample had a matte finish and it looked like it was hand scrapped. This means it would hide the dirt, but it would never get the beautiful deep sheen the other options would have. Here are some pictures I pulled off their website. The first two are the glossy options and the third is the hand scrapped.

    

I walked around the house with the samples, seeing what they looked like in different lighting around the house. It was really hard to pick which one was best, they all were very pretty, but I decided to go with the matte finish; so I didn't have to sweep as much. ;)

Now, laminate has to spend time in the house before you start laying it out. It need to adjust to the humidity conditions of the house. So, on the weekend before we planned on laying flooring I headed to Lumbar Liquidators to buy my flooring. I was very excited. I had my room measurements ready, my square footage calculated, and the sample of what I wanted in hand. LJ borrowed his parents 15 passenger van so we could take it all home in one trip. 

Of course, that's when I ran in to my first problem.... So, apparently the samples they have in store have these little stickers on them if they actually have the item in stock. Exactly zero of the three I liked were in stock. I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed. I wished I had noticed the little "in stock" stickers when I originally got the samples because I would have only looked at laminate that I could take home right away. The sales person told me I could have my first choice option ordered and shipped to my house, but I couldn't wait that long. I needed something right away so it had the appropriate time to adjust to our house's humidity level before work started the next weekend.

So, I had to make a decision on the fly. I decided to go with the below option. It costs $1.89/ sq ft. We knew the cost was a little higher than the IKEA laminate; but the fact that it was 12mm compared to 5mm and had attached padding really made the extra 25 cents/sq ft worth it.  (It's the one in the middle)

However, this laminate was also not in stock in the Houston store.  Luckily, the Lumbar Liquidators in Spring (city north of Houston) had enough on hand to fill our order. So, LJ and his brother J. were amazing and drove all the way to Spring to pick up the laminate.Here is what it looked like sitting in an empty bedroom adjusting to humidity (This isn't even all of it... there was a LOT required for such a big job).

Laminate isn't the only thing you need though, there are quite a few other tools required when laying down laminate.

First, you need instillation kits. These are sold at the laminate store; and include the following:

The little black things are called spacers (there are 20 in each kit), the metal bar is a pull and the other piece is called a block.  (We'll get to their functions later.) I bought three kits, but I ended up going back later to buy two more since we had so many people helping lay the flooring. 

You an buy them online if you click on this picture:

Besides the laminate, moisture barrier, and instal kits (all bought from Lumbar Liquidators) here are the other supplies required:
- A rubber mallet for each instal kit
- A square for each install kit (don't know why they are called squares when they are actually triangles, but whatever)
- wood pencils
- New fine toothed blade for the miter saw
- Miter saw (we borrowed one from my dad, they are NOT cheap so try and find a friend/family member who will let you borrow theirs)
- Circular saw (borrowed a friends)
- Jig saw (ended up having to buy this
- Eye protection (we put this next to the miter saw so whoever went to use the saw would also use the glasses - safety first!)
- Nail gun - the kind that shoot out finishing nails (we ended up buying one for about $100)
- Air compressor - to power the nail gun (we ended up buying one for about $100)
- Wood putty
- Wood glue
- Utility knife (for opening boxes)

I wish I could say that we had all of the above ready to go when we started laying down the flooring, but in true DIY fashion, we ended up having to make multiple trips to the hardware store. I'm just grateful that we live close to Home Depot.

That's all for now, these posts are turning into books! Thanks for reading (if you've gotten this far) and we'll start actually putting down the floors next time. :)

This project continues here and here.