Floor Make Over

Winter is over and we thought that it is a good time to start working on house updates. There's a lot we want to do but we want to take it one at a time.

Installing Laminate Floor Do It Yourself

First, we want to redo our floor. When we got the house, vinyl tiles were installed in the kitchen and now its coming off. When we pulled it out, we were surprised of what's underneath. Old multi-layer of vinyl tiles. We removed all old layers of vinyl and checked the foundation, luckily we did not find any problem. The frames are intact and there are no other issues found.

We decided to keep the hard floor looks on the dining area and vinyl tiles on the kitchen. As a newby and having no experience re-doing the floors, we were not sure how are we going to maintain the hard floor looks, so we initially decided we are going to sand it and then refinish.

Hubby started sanding but then we found out its a lot of work and it will take a while to finish it plus there's a lot of dust particles going on inside the house so we changed our plan. Actually, at first I wanted to install interlocking floors but thought it will cost us a lot so we tried the option that is less expensive. Considering all the work needed to sand the floor and furnish it, we decided to use laminate floors. We then went to Lowes and order the floors we wanted. It waited for more than a week for our order to deliver.

We started on the kitchen side by laying down 1cm subfloor for added support and to even the layers of unwanted vinyl adhesive that were hard to remove. Then laid down underlayment first before laying the laminate floors. According to Lowes sales staff, it's good to have it to protect from moisture. To expedite the work a little bit, I helped hubby in laying the floor pieces while he cuts some pieces to get the length we needed for the sides. We finished kitchen floor in 2 days and the result is remarkable.

For the dining area, we only used underlayment and a laminate. We did the same steps as we did in the kitchen. We are learning process from what we did so its a lot easier this time.

The last part we did is the transition in which we installed T-molding matching color. It's readily available in the store and easy to install.

We are so proud that we did it ourselves, here is our finished floor.

Here are the materials we used:

• Interlocking laminate floors (hardwood)
• Interlocking laminate floors (tiles)
• underlayment
• subfloors
• t-molding
• measuring tool
• electric saw

Here's the procedure on how we did it:

1. Remove baseboard.
2. Prepare the floor and clean.
3. Lay down subfloors.
4. Lay down underlayment.
5. Install the first row of laminate.  Used spacers between wall and laminate.
6. Cut the last piece of the row according to desired length.
7. Install the next pieces of laminate floor on succeeding rows.
8. Install the transition molding.
9. Install the baseboards back.