Installing Laminate Flooring

I just spent a large chunk of the three-day President's Day weekend installing Pergo laminate flooring in our dining room. It would reasonably well, for a large home project. No major visitations of Murphy, though plenty of minor ones.

I bought the Pergo videotape, and of course that made it seem so easy. Gutted room, everything pre-cut, it all falls right into place. It's a little like wallpapering--the long, straight strips do go fast. The boards really do snap together effortlessly. It is all the perimeter stuff that drags on.

I had to start with a fair amount of prep work. Pull off the molding, carefully, so it can be re-used. Then painstakingly pull out the finish nails, boy was that fun. Then cut and pull the carpeting out. Then pull up the pad, and pull out all the staples in the floor. Check the floor for flatness, with a string--Murphy was with me there, it was nice and flat. Generally clean up the floor. Finally, even though this floor doesn't squeak, many of ours do, and I have vowed, whenever the carpet is replaced, to fix that--so the best part of two hours driving screws into the subfloor.

The biggest challenge I had was the 1/4" expansion space around the perimiter. They give you these little plastic spacers. Problem is, they assume your drywall runs all the way to the floor. Only mine stops 1/2"-3/4" above the floor--the molding covers it. I would guess that is the norm.

So why is that a problem? Well, the bottom of the spacers have a void behind them, so they don't stay in place--they get pushed over by the planks. And since it is a floating floor, and you sometimes have to hammer the planks in place with a block or pull bar, the entire floor wants to move on you. My solution was to fasten some 4" mending plates against the wall and flush with the subfloor. That provided a firm stop to the floor.

Oh, the other thing was, I never really mastered snapping the floor in in both directions. I would snap it in along the long edge, and pound it on the other end. I know you are supposed to be able to do it, but it was very troublesome for me, much easier to just hammer it into place.

Then, I didn't pay quite enough attention to the section on transitions, thinking I would loop back to that after I had some progress and experience under my belt. I overlooked a tip that would have made my life easier--nailing a 1x as a guide to butt the ends of the planks against (especially useful on my 6' opening to the Living Room). As a result, I had to do a lot of careful, tedious measuring and fitting.

The last thing, and I know this sounds a bit silly, but they really could have emphasized more strongly that you need to pay attention to which end you are cutting. It's not like cutting a 2x4, where you can trim that 18" off of whichever end is handy. I repeatedly found I had trimmed off the tongue when I needed to trim the groove, or vice-versa.