Construction, Home & Lifestyle

Flooring Installation: Laminated Flooring

When you consider why laminated flooring needs to be installed by a flooring professional in Durham, you must also consider the difficulty level of the task. A simple solution could be using an installer that has experience in installing laminated flooring. Most installers have many years of experience due to the design of the product. Laminated floors are multi-layered, consisting of a protective lamination layer along with a melamine layer underneath. The melamine layer can crack with repeated foot traffic, making a floor that is installed by inexperienced hands to be a poor investment in your home.

If you are considering installing laminated flooring in your home, there are several important pieces of information that you should be aware of before calling a local installer. One piece of information that you need to know is the reason behind the installation. There are two main reasons that laminate flooring can be installed: resistance measures or decorative appearance. Resistance measures are why laminated flooring needs to be installed by a professional flooring company in Durham, because the product contains a melamine layer that is very hard and will damage a novice.

Another main reason to hire a professional installer is the actual difficulty of the installation. Laminated flooring can be quite complicated, especially for someone that has never laid tile or carpet. Laying carpet is not as difficult as it sounds, it takes a lot of measuring, planning, and thought processes. This can be quite intimidating for someone that has never installed floor covering in their lives.

Professional installers will most likely begin by setting up a scale model of the room they will be installing in. From here they will take measurements of all the surfaces within the room, including doorways, windows, and any electrical wiring. If the room is carpeted, laminate floors will have to be measured and pre-designed to match the dimensions of the carpet. The same goes if the room is comprised of wooden planks or other surface. These measurements are used to create a pattern for the laminate flooring planks to follow, this pattern is what makes it easier for the installers to install the planks in the proper order and to make them level at the edges.

After all of the measurements have been taken, the planks will then be cut to the proper length and laid on the flooring. Each individual plank will be laid in place using a glue that has a real wood base. If the flooring already contains a stain, a primer coat will need to be applied before the planks are laid on top of it; the primer coat helps the flooring adhere to the boards and help it not to stain from the planks underneath.

A final, and very important step in the installation process is to attach each plank to its brackets with nylock nuts. This helps to ensure that the planks do not move when walked on and helps prevent warping that could occur due to movement. Each of the boards will then be scored in a specific order to make it easier to assemble the laminated flooring to its proper home. This score is usually done with a piece of graph paper so that it can be used to determine the proper position of each board. Once the boards are properly placed, the nylock nuts will be used to hold the planks in place. With this complete installation process complete, a person’s laminate flooring should look as good as if it was purchased right from the store.