Laminate Floors (September 23 - 26th, 2017)

We headed to Phoenix this weekend to help my parents install some new laminate floors.  They had tile in their kitchen and laundry room, but the rest of the house was carpeted.  They wanted to get rid of the carpet and replace it with something cleaner and more functional.  They settled on laminate floors.  They chose a color called Ashville Hickory, which I thought was beautiful.

We started in their bedroom and followed the directions for laying laminate.  You have to use an underlayment on concrete to prevent moisture from getting to the laminate.  Then you measure the room to make sure that you won't end up with little pieces in either direction.  You then stagger the planks to get a hardwood floor look.

We worked from left to right, and it snapped into place very easily.  The men could just snap it into place (using their brute force), but I had to tap it into place with a rubber mallet.  

In addition to the flooring, they decided to replace the baseboard trim with new stained trim, so my mom and I conditioned and stained the trim while the men were tearing out the carpeting and cleaning he first floor.

We set up a saw in the garage for cutting the laminate.  They make laminate cutters which reduce the saw dust, but the saw worked fine as well.

Once the trim was stained, we all just jumped in laying the laminate.

The main part of the floor goes very quickly, but all of the extra cuts for the closets and around doors take a lot more time.

My parents room is almost done.  You can see that there is still carpet in the hall.  We had to work around furniture, so we did one room at a time, moving furniture before we started on each room.

Once the floor was done in their room, Steve and I started on the base board trim.  We wanted to finish all of the trim before we moved the furniture back into each room so it wouldn't have to be moved again.

Once my parents room was completely done, we moved on to the hall and living room. We pulled up the carpet, pad tack strips and base boards, then scraped the concrete to make sure all of the carpet glue was gone and it was nice and flat.

Since we really din't have anywhere to move furniture to, we did the living room in two halves, completing the first half and then moving the furniture over there so that we could complete the second half.

Once again, we started in the left hand corner, this time in the hall.  The first piece was a bugger since we had to cut it to fit two door frames.

Once the first half was done, we moved the furniture out of the second half so we could tear up the carpet, pad, tack strips, and base boards and start scraping again.

Then back to laying the laminate again.

Then back to installing the baseboard trim again.  Steve and I would measure and cut each piece and my dad would nail it in place.

Last but not least was the spare bedroom.  By the time we got to this room, we were finally getting the hang of it.

It was a dusty mess while we were working, but my mom would continually sweep up our mess to try and keep the dust down a bit.

Once we were all done with the installation, I went back through the house and cleaned all of the floors with a damp cloth.  It seemed like the only way to pick up all of the fine sawdust.

The spare bedroom

My parents room

The hallway transition

The living room

We had one little unexpected project while we were there.  In order to put laminate in the closets, we had to take out the old closet doors and tracks, but unfortunately when we did that, they fell apart and were ruined.  So with a quick trip to Home Depot, we were able to get new closet doors and install them too.

The house is clean, the furniture is all moved back in, and my parents have beautiful new laminate floors.  All they will need to do is paint the new closet doors at some point, but there is no hurry on that.

They seem happy with their new floors.  We are so glad!  It took us five days of hard work, but it was definitely worth it.  

A quick side note...While we were helping with my parents floors, we stayed at the Sleep Inn on Southern Avenue in Mesa, AZ.  It was a great little hotel with clean, well laid out rooms, a hot breakfast waiting for us each morning, and hot cookies every afternoon.  We would definitely stay there again.