Laminate Flooring

One of the first jobs necessary before we moved into this house was to remove all the old stinky, stained carpet and replace it with laminate flooring.  Lucky for us only the upstairs had carpets but somebody actually placed laminate flooring over top (to cover) the old hallway carpet! We wanted to remove all the stinky old house smells so the old carpet and laminate had to go. It really didn't take too long to remove the laminate and carpet that was there, the longest part of the whole removal was pulling out the tack strip.

The handrail was removed before I could pull the last strip of laminate and completely expose all of the carpet in the hallway. After removing all of the carpet and tack strip, there was a low spot in the center of the hallway so I needed to remove all of the quarter inch plywood including an old carpet runner and expose the sub-flooring. Would you believe that I needed to remove 3 layers before exposing the sub-floor! There were so many nails! 

At last it was time to start from scratch, I opted to reinstall new quarter ply to bring the hallway up to the same level as the bedroom flooring. This way I could run my entire floating laminate floor through the doorways and have the hallway and bedrooms completed without a single seam.  Make sure to have your underlayment larger than the floor (so it runs up the wall approx. 2" to prevent moisture.

You can remove the extra underlay after the laminte is installed. The job worked out great as I choose to do the hallway in a dark color and the bedrooms in a light color by simply installing the bedroom laminate directy on to the hallway laminate.  This is an easy process to complete, but just make sure to cut the bottom of the door frames so that you can slide the laminate under them and creating a seamless look. Other then that, read the instructions, you must install the floor a quarter inch from each wall (acheived by spacers or a small cut piece of laminate). To snap the pieces together you can use a laminate installation tool or easily use a scrap piece of laminate and gently tap it so that you don't tear up the edges of your new floor.

Always remember to be safe not sorry! When working with power tools or any tool, proceed with caution! It is possible to get severely injured even the smallest of jobs! So just be careful.