How To Square A Floor For Laminate

Next cut strips of underlayment to size and lay the strips down across the exposed floor.

How to square a floor for laminate.

Measure the width of the room by the length to get the square footage of the room then add 10 more to account for any waste or mistakes. Measure away from the wall the width of one piece of flooring and add 1 4 inch for example if flooring is 5 inches wide measure out 5 1 4 inches and snap a chalk line across the room. The area with waste. The area without waste.

Fix concrete subfloors with a patching compound and for wood subfloors remove protruding nails and replace any damaged boards. You can also use our flooring calculator to estimate the square footage of laminate needed. In this video i am showing how to install laminate flooring for the first time. This will determine the amount of flooring you need.

The most inexpensive laminate flooring can be as little as 80 90 cents a square foot and it goes up to about 2 3 per square foot. When installing hardwood or laminate floors you generally follow the line of the most prominent wall but there s a problem with this approach. Installing laminate flooring in unsquare rooms is remarkably easy since most systems today are floating floors that don t require glue or nails. Laminate flooring is ready to install as long as the base floor is clean and smooth.

You ll also want to tear up any carpet in the room and remove the leftover tack strips. You can use it to calculate net square footage of more than just one room. But laying out the laminate floor layout pattern ahead of time can still be complicated especially in an older home with out of square walls. In order to keep the floor straight and square start laying the laminate away from the wall because the wall may not be straight.

It s rare to find a room that s perfectly square so the wall opposite the one you choose for the first row is probably angled with respect to it. You ll also need a pad underneath the flooring which can cost between 25 75 cents a square foot. After removing the existing flooring baseboards and quarter moulding check that the subfloor is solid flat and clean.