The winter draws on.....done most of my Christmas shopping already ! Just hoping it doesn't snow too...
The winter draws on.....done most of my Christmas shopping already ! Just hoping it doesn't snow too soon.
Member since:04.03.2003
Reviews:123
Members who trust:42
We had taken the carpet up in my bedroom- we did it while my younger son had some friends over for the afternoon and we threw the old carpet down the stairs..they thought we were mad.
So we were left with bare floorboards. They were not in dreadful condition but it would have taken some sanding to get them in a lovely condition to varnish, and we have asthma so the potential dust would have been a problem. We thought we would get some laminated flooring to put down and hey presto- an instant floor!!!
We moved all of the furniture out of my room- luckily we have a big house and we could move it out and stand it around in corridors and other rooms, but nevertheless, it did look crowded. My room looked huge! That's something you have to consider if you are going to laminate your floors- what will you do with the furniture while you are doing it? You can't stand it on the stuff you have just done becasue it distorts it - so think about that before you start!
Measured the room- and it was big- it isn't an illusion..for the first time I began to have doubts about how much this was going to take to do.
Worked out that we would need 13 packs which include 2.21 square metres.
Went off to B+Q and got 13 packs, some underlay membrane and some skirting edges where the edges would show. I was going to get it for all the way round, but my dad persuaded me that it would be daft to buy it for all the way round , especially where it would never be seen, and at
£4.98 per peice (2.2 meters long) he had a good point.
HOW MUCH WAS THE COST?
Each pack of FLOORMASTER LAMINATED FLOORING (of 2.21 square metres ) was £9.98. This price may vary depending upon the shade you want and how much they have. We got it at a special offer but I think the prices have gone up since.
Each 2.2m long skirting edge was £4.98
Underlay membrane of 10 square metres was £9.98
A fixing kit was £8.98- this had spacing pegs and a thing you place against the plank before tapping it to make sure it is fitted with its neighbour-and a piece of metal to homd the planks together with.
YOU DON'T NEED GLUE or SCREWS or NAILS. IT CLICKS TOGETHER- or so it says.
Got it all home and left it a few days. It says on the packaging that you should leave it at room temperature for 48 hours where you are going to fit it so it has chance to straightne out and swell if it is going to . We didn't do it deliberately to comply with this message- we just didn't have the time to do it that day. I haven't heard anyone else say their floor has come to bits becasue they didn't leave it for that amount of time but perhaps they are not telling me!
WHAT DO YOU DO? Clean the floor where you are laying this flooring so there's no rubbish underneath. If your floor is uneven or cold, put the underlay down. If it's not uneven or very cold you may not even need any at all. Open the pack- and get out some pieces. You start in the left hand corner and do a whole length of the room. After putting in a spacer to allow for expansion, you put your first piece, and then you get another and click them together. You have to hold the second piece up at an angle and then lay it down-it should click with the first one. When you get to the end of the room, you may have to cut the boarding with a saw- a jigsaw is best.
That was the easy bit for us- we did a row and then thought -hey this is easy, let's do the next row. Like building a wall, you have to make sure that the ends are staggered, so use the leftover bit from the previous row to start. Now is the tricky bit. You have to place the second row piece at an angle against the first row floorboard and press forward and fold down at the same time. Not easy at all. When it was the first piece it went in- but then you have to do the second piece which you have to place the short edge against the first piece and press down ..THEN you have to make sure the long edge goes into the first row by lifting the floorboard up (together with the piece you prevously laid in the same row) and pushing it against the previous row...this is really hard.
It was difficult because every time we got one bit in it would knock another bit out. At one point the whole row came out. By this time it had taken us about 2 hours to do a row and a bit. Granted the row was 19 feet long but this wasn't what we had been led to expect- everyone had said how easy it was.
We thought it must be a knack that you got after a while so we carried on- for another 4 hours and we had only done 3 rows. They did look good so it was encouraging us. BUT My hands were very sore with the effort of pushing the pieces against the previous row. Our backs were aching from the bending and crouching down we needed to do to click and push....and we were beginning to get fed up, cross and tearful.
I hated this- I never give up and am good at tiling , painting and other householdDIY..why could we not get it right?
Finally after 6 hours we gave up in disgust! We pulled the pieces up and took the remaining 9 packs back to B+Q. We bought some floor paint and have painted the floorboards a lovely navy blue. Although it isn't laminated flooring, it looks great and it cost a fraction of the time and money it had taken to do a part of the room in laminate.
Are we sorry? In a way, yes-because we had looked forward to having a lovely light beech coloured floor. But in a way, not because we want our relationship to continue! If we had carried on we may have lost our tempers with each other! And I have a gorgeous blue floor that matches my decorations and the glossiness reflects the light.
What has really cheesed me off has been the number of smug people who say with astonished tones that THEY did a room of a million square feet and it only took half an hour! How could we give up??What's wrong with us? Well, I say to them, you are welcome to your laminated floor- and you must have the knack becasue we certainly haven't. If I have one more smug person saying something similar to me, they had better watch out, that's all!
B+Q do have people in store who show you how to do it- but he was not available when we went into collect the flooring-nor were there any of the handy hints leaflets that might have made a difference. The sales people are lovely and are very helpful- but they couldn't believe that we couldn't do it, either...neither of us are stupid and neither of us are afraid to roll our sleeves up and get stuck in with making things or DIY. I cannot believe that we are the only people in the whole country who have found this difficult but nobody else will admit it!!!!!!
Anyway, thank you B+Q, for taking the unused packs of flooring back, along with 2 rolls of underlay. No questions asked (well, apart from "Couldn't you do it???Why not???")
Customer service at its best.
Maybe next time we will pay someone to do it for us and we can watch them and see where we went wrong!!!
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well as im typing the other half is pulling up our flooring due to it has swelled, and yes we did leave the sufficiant gap it just keeps swelling!!! wish i had never bothered. but heck it is funny watching him doing it !
ElizaF 22.03.2004 17:45
I guess that the moral of this tale is that floors aren't worth frienships :) xx E.
COOOEEE 22.03.2004 04:14
Don't forget to let me know if you want this entered for the Home Improvement March competition. Details in the Community Centre. Fionaxx
Advantages: easy to wipe clean, better for asthmatic children and more hygienic than carpet Disadvantages: shows dirt quicker than carpet and can be noisier
di-buzz 04.10.2001 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of B&Q Flooring
Mar 14th, 2004
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