Category: laminate

Laminate Flooring Reviews and Tips

What exactly is laminate flooring and what makes it the best choice for you?  

Laminate flooring has evolved into a very competitive alternative to hardwood or stone floors. It is a composite of several different layers fused together. The best laminate flooring will have a thick, hard wearing protective top layer, 3 to 4 further inner core layers for structural stability and a quality click-lock system for easy installation.  

Let’s look into more advantages of laminate floors. 

Barely distinguishable from the real thing! – Top laminate floors replicate the look and feel of wood or stone. 

Infinite variety of design – Photographic and printing techniques make it possible to recreate just about every kind of flooring surface imaginable.  

Cost – The cost of producing it and thus the retail price is significantly cheaper than authentic hardwoods or stone products.  

Eco-Friendly – Laminates are mostly made in the home country of sale, it provide a lower carbon-footprint than the farming, harvesting and transportation of hardwoods or stone flooring. Plus many manufacturers use recycled wood products for the MDF layer.  

Easy installation and removal – Laminate floors come with “click-lock” a system that simplifies the installation of laminate boards (as a floating floor) over a subfloor, and thanks to it laminate flooring it is one of the easiest floors to remove when it needs to. 

Durable and resistant – Laminates are perfect for high traffic areas and can even be installed in moist areas like bathrooms (the waterproof kind).  

Easy clean and maintenance – Laminate flooring is easy to clean: simple vacuum or sweep and then run a barely damp mop over it, no annual maintenance projects required! 

Cons of Laminate Flooring 

It’s not real! – That’s the number one reason that puts some people off laminate. Lower perceived value – Because it is lower in cost and not authentic, laminate is not seen as a premium product.  

Cannot be refinished – If it gets badly damaged you cannot simply sand it back. It must be replaced.  

Hard, noisy and slippery! – Laminate floors have a harder feel than real hardwood. It makes them inefficient at absorbing sound. Also, beware because this floor can be a bit slippery! 

So What Makes a Great Laminate Floor? 

A laminate with a varied pattern makes easy to create a more varied and natural look to your floor as you lay it. The best laminate flooring manufacturers have kept up with all the latest design trends to ensure their products stay relevant to today’s market. 

The biggest trends are: 

Bigger planks Trying to replicate trends in real hardwood flooring there are now longer and wider planks too. 

High gloss finishes – laminate flooring paired with refined minimalist interiors can offer a very chic high-end look, even on a budget. 

Laminate your walls! – Yes, you read that right! If done right, adding the same wood look laminate flooring from your floor onto a key accent wall can look spectacular. 

Consider where it’s going – High traffic areas may need laminates with superior wear layers, and basement or bathrooms may need specific underlayment to deal with potential moisture. 

Don’t forget the underlayment! – Specially if you are planning to use laminate in the bathroom or with under floor heating. 

DIY- friendly? – Laminate flooring is one of the more DIY-friendly flooring options, There are tons of how-to guides and videos online. 

Why not find out how much you could save yourself by getting a free quote for laminate floor installation from local contractors? 

Other laminate flooring options – There are other green alternatives to consider like bamboo, eucalyptus and cork floors. These floors are created using similar fusing technologies as those used to create laminates. 

Original source.

Laminate Flooring = Lasting Durability

Laminate flooring could be the perfect choice for your active lifestyle.  

Durability, good looks and value are smartly balanced so you upgrade and decorate without breaking your budget or loose quality. 

Choose Laminates to Achieve Your Decorating Goals 

Laminates are available in a broad variety of handsomely crafted designs. They provide the rugged durability at a value price. Thus you can find a long-wearing laminate style that can help accomplish your decorating ideas within your budget. 

Laminate Flooring = Lasting Durability 

The beautiful design you love today will remain the same in the years to come. 

All laminates are constructed of four layers: 

  • The wear layer is a clear layer of aluminum oxide that protects against fading, stains and surface burns. 
  • The design layer contains a photograph of the floor’s surface appearance. 
  • The core layer is a durable high-density board to protect the floor. 
  • The back layer is a stability layer that helps balance the floor. 

Thanks to layered construction, Laminate Floors will always look as good as the day it was installed. 

Original source.

Having THIS flooring inside your home can add THOUSANDS to your property’s value

ADDING value to your home can help when it comes to selling it, and having a certain type of flooring inside your property can do just that.

Installing new flooring across your home can increase your house’s worth, depending on what material you use. 

Out of vinyl, carpet and wood flooring, which can add the most value to your property?

Discount Flooring Depot suggests the types of floor you should avoid, and which one you should invest in to up your property’s price. 

The retailer suggests that low quality vinyls and laminates will drag your value down, and it seems most homes are leaning towards wooden floors rather than carpeted floors. The best floor to invest in is a wooden floor – which is better than carpet – as it provides “extra equity” in your home. 

Plus, a high quality floor will last for much longer than a carpet, giving you life time value, as well as increasing house worth. 

Hardwood flooring is ideal, as it’s a luxury that many people associate with money and class. 

But if real wood flooring is out of your price range, you can get high quality laminates. 

Top of the range laminate floors have realist V-Grooves to mimic the feel and appearance of a real board, and they have a wealth of grain variation and knots throughout, just as you’d expect from real wood. 

When it comes to bathrooms or kitchens, hard wood flooring generally doesn’t go – but you don’t have to settle for vinyl. 

You can get water resistant laminate, and it’s not that expensive. 

Discount Flooring Depot’s Hydro Guard Range or laminate floors look like real wood, but without the problems that mixing real wood in a wet environment will often bring.The retailer says spending around £400 to £600 could increase your home’s value by £1,300. 

The colour of your front door can also have a big impact on your home’s sale. So what shades should you go for, and which should you avoid? 

Research carried out by Westbury Windows and Joinery’s found that white was the most popular colour for wood front doors or entrance doors in the UK. 

Natural stained and/or varnished finishes were the second most popular choice with black in third place. 

Original source 

Waterproof Plastic Laminate Flooring: Often Discussed, Rarely Seen

Laminate flooring, due to its large quantity of wood content, is acceptable but not ideal for environments with high moisture, such as bathrooms or basements. Even “laminate-friendly” rooms such as kitchens can have sub-zones that are unfriendly to laminate flooring: in front and under the dishwasher, sink, and refrigerator.

A type of laminate flooring called waterproof laminate, made entirely of plastic, allows you to install this product in such places.

While this product truly is water-proof, it has significant limitations that may encourage you to seek other types of flooring.

Laminate’s Solution for Dealing With Water: Avoid It Altogether

One solution has been to ask homeowners not to install the product in moist places, such as basements or even children’s bathrooms.

Slightly more effective solutions have been to develop tighter seams between the boards and to introduce more melamine resins in the fiberboard mix.

But none of that matters when your dishwasher overflows. This is the reason behind the “topical spills” clause in most laminate flooring warranties.

A typical industry warranty (Armstrong) notes that its laminates are covered under warranty and “[w]ill resist topical water damage, meaning that planks or tiles will not swell, delaminate or peak at the seams due to topical spills, provided that the liquid is wiped up and the floor is allowed to dry.”

Topical spills means a dropped glass of water, not an overflowing clothes washer. Even though topical does not mean “top,” it could: all spills which remain on the plasticized wear layer, with perfectly seamed boards, and with 100% silicone caulk added in problem areas (around bathtubs), should remain free of damage.

What Happens to the Fiberboard Core?

The problem is not with the top layer, but with the core. Laminate flooring’s core is little more than a dense type of fiberboard. If you’ve ever seen a sheet of particle board get rained on, you’ll know how it bubbles up and crumbles like a wet soda cracker.

One little-known aspect of this moisture-and-laminate issue is that the moisture problem actually starts in the factory, not in the home. Flooring manufacturers have found that high moisture content in the fiberboard particles in the factory can result in poor adhesion of the top melamine wear layer.

Waterproof Laminate Brands

Today, Parcolys NV, a Belgian company that is the parent of Aqua-Step, is the main manufacturer of waterproof laminate flooring. With 23 woods and 3 stones, Aqua-Step does not have the wide range of styles homeowners might expect from the non-waterproof market.

But the good thing is that Aqua-Step is truly 100% waterproof–no need to lay down a moisture barrier. Planks join by way of a click-and-lock method. Conventional laminate needs expansion joints to allow for the product to expand and contract according to room humidity. Aqua-Step absorbs no water at all, so no need for expansion joints.

Dumaplast Dumafloor is another one, also from Belgium. Dumafloor has been in production since 2007.

Expansion Profiles Unnecessary

One unexpected benefit of installing waterproof laminate is that it does not require expansion profiles. These are intermittent gaps that are imposed on a large field of conventional laminate flooring to allow for natural expansion and contraction of the flooring. Waterproof laminate is 100% unaffected by moisture, thus it needs no expansion profiles.

Luxury Vinyl Flooring as an Alternative

Most of the waterproof laminate market has been siphoned off by an upstart called luxury vinyl flooring (LVF).

LVF is thicker than ordinary vinyl flooring; has better embossing (texture); and looks more like real stone or wood.

LVF manufacturers have been pumping out tons of exciting wood species and stones, such as teak, bamboo, travertine, and bamboo.

It is 100% waterproof, too. You can drop LVF in a tub of water for weeks and it will come out having absorbed no water.

One downside of LVF is that it is not as thick as waterproof laminate. Aqua-Step clocks in at 8 mm; for LVFs, 8 mm would be considered very thick and very expensive. Average thickness for LVF runs around 3-5 mm.

Is Mannington ICORE Indicative of the Waterproof Laminate Market?

In 2003, Mannington Mills patented a new type of waterproof laminate that bypassed many of those previous solutions. Their product, dubbed ICORE, had some of these features:

Thermoplastic Core, Not Fiberboard – The key aspect is that ICORE did away with the fiberboard and replaced it with a “plastic” core made of PVC. As you can imagine, PVC (which is also used for water pipes) is quite waterproof.

Print Layer and Overlay – This is just like conventional laminate flooring. Separate layers are required for better print adhesion, rather than printing straight onto the thermoplastic core.

Honeycombed “Cells” Inside – “Foot feel” is important with laminate flooring, because it is so thin. Walking on laminate flooring can be difficult because it has little “give.” With waterproof laminate such as ICORE, interior channels or cells made for a springier feel.

Then, Mannington pulled the plug on iCORE, no reason given but presumably due to poor sales.

Original Source By Lee Wallender

How to fix popping hardwood floor

This is a technique to fix popping floors on engineered wood. i.e. Bamboo, press wood and other similar types of flooring.Glue injection system that fixes popping, hollow, and squeaky sounds with engineered hardwood floors that have lost their glue bond on concrete.

If you need help with popped floors call us, we’ll gladly solve the problem for you. My number is (305) 776-3584