Laminate Flooring

[Overland Tonka]

Amtico....now that is classy and very expensive!

[Wolfracer]

Having laid Amtico, solid wood, laminate and engineered wood I can only recommend solid wood as the best, followed by engineered wood, but this has to laid loose, so you "can" still get warping and drumming sounds from the floor...

Gripfill will not stick to unsealed concrete, and would not recommend it straight onto sealed concrete either.

2 options.

1. Lay 18mm WBP ply to whole area, buy solid wood and nail it down. this will last longer than your house...
2. Lay hardboard screwed down at 30 cm intervals and gripfill T&G down, using clear drying wood glue for the T&G's Very solid floor.

or just buy some 9.99 psm laminate and that green foam backing stuff and whack it down in an afternoon...
Choices eh?

[Albannach]

Thanks for the replies and advice. I think we can discount real wood, it's too expensive for Shirley. I like the idea of the engineered wood and I don't like cheap laminate, it looks too cheap.

Would engineered wood outlast a similarly priced carpet?

[Wolfracer]

Thanks for the replies and advice. I think we can discount real wood, it's too expensive for Shirley. I like the idea of the engineered wood and I don't like cheap laminate, it looks too cheap.

Would engineered wood outlast a similarly priced carpet?

Yep.
It's solid wood on top - upto 4mm on the good stuff - look for stuff that says it can be sanded down...
just make sure your (sub)floor is flat - any deviations will lift/bend/warp/twist the boards and create that horrid laminate "slap" when you walk on it....

[Maverick]

If I remember ours was class 5 indutrial laminate, and it don't look too bad (have a look at my house thread on the darkside). We don't get any echo, slap or excess noise, I think that is due to the underlay that went underneath. I can't remember what it was, but it had thermal and sound proofing qualities.

[Fey!]

We had a black laminate floor put down 2 years ago in our sitting room, and a wodd-look laminate in the hall and office.

We were told by the sales guy that it had a 25 year gaurantee against scratching, and that it would be fine put down inside a sliding door.

The black laminate scratched in 20 minutes, and where it was inside the door started to rot very quickly. The shop replaced a couple of boards, but not all of the damaged ones. Eventually we replaced the section inside the door with tiles and had to put rugs under all of the furniture.

The wood-look laminate was fine; we haven't had any problems with it.

To add insult to injury, the fitters (not employed directly by the shop, but recommended by them) cut an upstairs water pipe and flooded the downstairs; fortunately the downstairs was down to bare concrete at the time!

[ROMEROTECH]

I put down laminate flooring downstairs 3years ago and it still looks good now. Uses a very thick underlay that's foil backed on one side. Even in cold weather it feels fine on bare feet and warms up quickly. It's very quiet and we get no echoes.

We've a piano and other heavy furniture that's been dragged across it and it's suffered little damage. It gets mopped now and again with the rest of the time being hoovered.

I've just put some more of exactly the same stuff in the office and it transforms the whole room.

It's never come apart and it doesn't slide about. I'm no DIY lover or expert but i managed to get it all down nicely and took my time as per when i did downstairs which also required floor boards replacing (1930's house). It all clicks together really well and the finish is spot on.

My home office (3mx4m) cost Ł370 all in, which includes all the edge beading and carpet to laminate doorway joiner. You might think it's a bit expensive for laminate but it will outlast any carpet i put down and is dead easy to keep clean (needs to be with dogs).

Plus the office chairs now slide about really well

[lawsy]

Tiles all the way for me..

I've seen far too many laminates lift n peel - plus its everywhere

Tiles however are just starting to get really popular again and some cracking designs out - we're planning on doing the entire ground floor next year..

and on a concrete floor they are no colder than laminates if laid correctly

[soramad]

Having laid Amtico, solid wood, laminate and engineered wood I can only recommend solid wood as the best, followed by engineered wood, but this has to laid loose, so you "can" still get warping and drumming sounds from the floor...

Gripfill will not stick to unsealed concrete, and would not recommend it straight onto sealed concrete either.

2 options.

1. Lay 18mm WBP ply to whole area, buy solid wood and nail it down. this will last longer than your house...
2. Lay hardboard screwed down at 30 cm intervals and gripfill T&G down, using clear drying wood glue for the T&G's Very solid floor.

or just buy some 9.99 psm laminate and that green foam backing stuff and whack it down in an afternoon...
Choices eh?

I prefer to go the ply route , but I normally screw the ply down into the concrete and then secret nail the boards through the tongues , unfortunately this bumps up the overall cost quite a bit especially in a big room.

[123-gtt]

Go semi soild,with a V groove,best to stick it down with flooring adhesive or floating is fine,brake the joints in door ways is a must and remove skirtings to fit under,this will be your cheapest route of best results,if you get any problems just give me a call,im a carpenter by trade and fitted hundreds of floors,dont be to put off by laminate you can get some good ones,but you do get what you pay for.

[gwh200]

[QUOTE=123-gtt;729465]Go semi soild,with a V groove
QUOTE]

[123-gtt]

[QUOTE=gwh200;729485]

Go semi soild,with a V groove
QUOTE]

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha well spotted

[gwh200]

That made me laugh out loud, for the second time this week.

[tintin]

That made me laugh out loud, for the second time this week.

The first time was when the mrs unpacked and hung a full length mirror and he saw his reflection when he got out of the bath!!

[gwh200]

Óllocks.