Laying the laminate with your own hands

Advantages of laminate

Laminate is becoming the most common floor material in residential and public premises due to a good price-quality ratio. Laying the laminate with your own hands is quite simple, which is an additional advantage of this material.

Laminate - laminated material. Standard thickness - 6-12 mm, width - 20 cm, length - 1-1.5 m. Panels of laminate are also produced in the form of tiles in the size 400x400 mm, 1200x400 mm.

The fact that laying the laminate with one's own hands is a simple and quick process is not the only advantage of this kind of floor covering, it has high resistance to mechanical damage, moisture resistance, low price, and does not require special care. And thanks to the brilliant effect in the room, a festive and festive atmosphere is created.

Choose a laminate

Depending on the purpose of the room, a class of laminate coating is selected, differing in terms of wear resistance. For public, living quarters and kitchens, laminate is an excellent material. A variety of colors and textures allow you to choose the right option for any style of the room. Patterns and coloring of the laminate successfully replicate any kind of wood, from white classic oak to red cherry, ceramic tile or stone. The floor covering should be not only strong and beautiful, but also provide sound insulation, for this purpose a substrate is used - polymer film (2 mm), in modern production this film is sometimes applied on the panel during manufacturing, which reduces the amount of work performed when laying the laminate.

Laminate laying technology

Despite the fact that laying the laminate with your own hands - it's quite simple, you should still take into account a number of rules that allow you to achieve high quality of the work done and, accordingly, simplify it. Before laying, allow the laminate to lie in the temperature regime of the room for several days.

Laying the laminate with your own hands begins with the preparation of the surface and depends on which base the laminate is laid on. The basis can serve as a wooden, concrete surface and even linoleum. Main requirements: the surface must be flat, clean and dry. The wooden base is ground, the concrete is poured with a self-leveling mixture, on top of which waterproofing is laid-polyethylene film (overlapped) and the plywood substrate (8-10 mm thick) or cork. Since the laminate is a cold coating, sometimes it is laid on a "warm floor", for this there are special types of laminate that can withstand prolonged heating.

Along the walls are installed spacer wedges (width - 10 mm), which after laying the laminate are removed. This is done in order to allow the laminate to expand and shrink when the room temperature changes. After laying the laminate, these slits are covered with skirting boards. We measure the room, determine the width of the bars near the walls. The rows are laid out with a shift of 35-45 cm relative to each other for an even distribution of the load, the extra ends are cut off and used in the next row. The rows are laid parallel to the light source, this makes it possible to make the seams invisible. Strive to tighten the strips to obtain a durable and beautiful floor.

Laminate care

Laying the laminate with your own hands and creating with its help a beautiful interior of your room, of course, and you will use it carefully. The recommendations are simple: periodically carry out a wet cleaning and try not to allow long-term exposure to water. The side surfaces of the laminate are treated with a moisture repellent coating, for example paraffin, in the manufacture, but if there is no coating, moisture ingression into the joints can lead to destruction and warpage of the laminate. In any case, try not to leave water on the floor for a long time.

Due to the convenience of laying and ease of operation, the laminate continues its victorious procession through the windows of building stores, offices, houses and people's apartments.