The laminate floor in the apartment looks beautiful and expensive. Its installation is quite simple, and the result of the work is very unpretentious and durable. The abundance of color solutions allows you to choose the option that is ideally suited to the overall interior. And the different strength classes of the flooring make it possible to use it in rooms with different floor loads.
Laying laminate flooring is a fairly simple process, but it also requires compliance with certain conditions and requirements. If this case is not taken seriously, then the result may not meet expectations, and even high-quality laminate floors cannot be saved in this case.
Surface preparation
Before you start installing the flooring, you need to carry out preparatory work. First, you need to level the floor. If it is wooden, then it must be processed with a grinder to hide all the bumps and transitions. If the floor is concrete, then it should be leveled in any suitable way, for example, using self-levelingsexes.
The next stage of preparatory work is the installation of the substrate. There is a huge selection of such products on the building materials market. These could be:
- special substrates from the manufacturer;
- cork pads;
- polyethylene foam of various types of foaming;
- substrates based on composite materials;
- extruded polystyrene foam.
I.e. The choice of materials is huge and in this matter you should be guided by your preferences. The only thing that needs to be done is to glue the joints and leave a small gap of 10-15 mm along the walls. Very often, old linoleum is used as a substrate. All! The preparatory work is over and you can start laying the floor from the laminate. If at the preparatory stage all work is done with high quality, then the floor covering will last for many years.
Laying laminate flooring
If the base is prepared for laying, then you can begin the most enjoyable process in this work - giving the floor a finished look. This stage begins with determining the place where the installation begins. The starting point is chosen arbitrarily. From where they decided - they started there. But there is one little trick - the laminate should be laid perpendicular to the window, then the joints between the panels will be invisible.
The first strip of laminate is laid along the wall. From the wall, pipes and other fixed objects, it is necessary to retreat a small distance, approximately 1 cm, sinceLaminate is exposed to seasonal humidity. Laminate boards are fastened with end locks. For a tighter fit of the panels to each other, they can be knocked out with a hammer through a piece of wood. Only in this case, the fitting piece of wood should be applied to the end side in places without a comb.
The next strip of flooring is laid next. So, strip by strip, a laminate floor is created. When laying each strip, the resulting flooring should be monitored for gaps. If there are gaps, then the boards are also adjusted with a hammer and a piece of wood. All. The floors are ready, the laminate can be dusted and enjoy the renovation.
