Project 4: Laying Laminate Floors (Part 3)

Have you ever thought about something so much that you thought you had finished the task when in reality it was still incomplete? For instance, when you think about what you want to say in an email reply and then forget to actually reply. This post is in response to my own 'I can't believe I didn't finish that' moment. Our laminate flooring has been done for almost 6 months... and I totally never finished explaining how to install it! So, without further ado... here is the next step in the process started here and continued here (warning, this is going to be a LONG one):

Last I left you we had all the floor boards down, leaving spacers between the boards and the walls.

Well, I have to admit I originally made an error when installing our floors. I skipped a step. BEFORE you lay down the boards, you need to trim your door jams. 

Trimming the Door Jams

To do this you use a flat saw and a scrap piece of laminate. By placing the laminate against the door jam and then using that as a guide for your saw, you'll be sure to cut the exact right height you need (so there are no ugly gaps when you're done).

When cutting you have to be careful to ONLY cut the door jam, not the actual baseboards.

When cutting these you'll discover that they aren't really solid all the way through, it's more like three pieces of trim. This means you don't have to cut through a lot of wood. See the sliver that results? That's how thick the trim is.

When finished, you should be able to slide your scrap piece of wood under the door jam to make sure everything is clear.

I have to be honest with you. This step took FOREVER. And the whole time you're on your hands and knees trying to apply pressure the saw in the right way so you cut the trim and not your fingers... it's not fun. And look how many door jams there are in a hallway! I called this the hallway from hell at the time...

So, that's how you trim the door jams. If I were any other site (aka all the sites I looked at before starting this project) I would neglect to say anything more about the door jams. But I'm not, lucky you. I'm going to show you just what a pain in the butt they are.

As part of the next step (laying the floor down) you have to install flooring in these newly cut door jams. I used a sharpie and kind of eye balled the first cut.

If the thought of just eye balling it scares you, feel free to come up with a better method. I sure couldn't. Anyways, I marked the cut and used a jig saw to cut out this corner.

Then I used this small piece of trim as a guide to see the spacing needed for the finished product. This piece fit in perfectly with my first cut (believe me, many did not).

The hard part here is you can't just shove the laminate in as far as you can under the door jam. Remember that the laminate needs a little room to swell from the weather. This means you have to leave as much space as you can between the wall and the laminate while still keeping the laminate under the door jam so you don't see the concrete floor. Honestly, its not easy. Some door jams had more room under there than others, don't ask me why. So, back to my example. I carefully held the laminate in place and removed my trial transition piece. Then I put spacers in the gap to hold everything in place. This required more spacers because the gap is much larger than the normal 1/4".

 In this picture you can see my little transition piece sample. It was just a scrap I found in the trash but it was crazy helpful. 

See? Isn't that simple? If it seems so remember one thing... the laminate has to slide into place. So while the first piece is not too bad, the second piece has to fit just right into the other door jam while sliding in to the existing laminate. The example above is when I am starting a room (in this case the hallway), so it's not too bad. Since this is the first row, there is plenty of room to slide that second piece into place. But what about when you're ending the room at a door jam? Here's what the dilemma looks like:

In this scenario the hall way side is already completed and I'm in a bedroom trying to finish up. It should be easy, right? Just slide it under the door jam on the left. 

But wait a minute, see that lip on the laminate on the right? The final piece needs to slide in to that too. And since the hall laminate is finished you can't slide anything in from the top. What do you do?  Answer: get creative.

I totally just trimmed off the bottom half of the lip on the right side of this laminate piece. Now at this point the piece still needed to slide under the door jam on the left, but it no longer needed to slide in on the right! Don't get me wrong, it was still a crazy tight fit... but with some careful planning (and maybe a little mumbling of words under my breath) I was able to get it in place.

Since the board no longer snapped in on the right, it was way more likely to move around. So, I put some gorilla glue on the groove on the right to replace the structural integrity the tongue and groove normally give. And it still snapped into place on the bottom, although a pull bar was needed.

Hopefully those of you who haven't given up on this post believe me when I say this was the worst and most time consuming step? It's tedious and frustrating and there are times when you just want to do a bad job to get it over with. BUT when you're done, it looks awesome. Just look at how the flooring flows so beautifully under the door jams on both sides. Believe me, anyone who has gone through this process would think it a thing of beauty. 

At this point we've trimmed the door jams, (we laid the actual laminate in the last post), and now we've finished laying the laminate down under the door jams. Thank God we only have two steps left! Quarter rounds and transition pieces...tune in on Friday for that post! I promise I wont make you wait another 6 months.