Ikea Hemse Laminated Flooring

...beading which I bought from Ikea had self adhesive strips. The difficult part is cutting the mitre joints for the corners, remember that your saw has a 45 degree angle! Aren't all those home improvement programmes useful? Sure give me some handy tips! Once the beading was fixed I just had a couple of edging strips to put along the edges by the doors (one cupboard, one door). Oh and the cupboard door had to be taken off and the bottom needed to be ...
...are expensive.

~~~ The Bottom Line ~~~
The floor looks absolutely beautiful, heaps better than the tatty old carpet that previously lived there. I've put felt pads on the feet of all the furniture to protect it, you find these by the laminate flooring as well. All I need now is a nice rug to put in the middle of the room, I guess its time to hit the sales!
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I've laid a laminate floor! It was really easy and took about 10 hours in total. I bought all the materials from Ikea, where they promise that by following their instructions you will be able to lay the floor or they will give you a refund. That looked good to me as I wasn't going to rely on hubby. They were also very cheap, especially as I didn't need a heavy use laminate as it was going in a spare bedroom.

~~~ Purchase & Storage ~~~
I purchased the goods a month before I laid them with the intention of laying the floor over my Christmas vacation. Well the best laid plans and all that, I started it 3 days before going back to work. The instructions said you had to turn the central heating off for two days before laying the floor and two days afterwards, obviously impossible at that time of year. A chat with a builder friend revealed that this wouldn't be strictly necessary as I had stored the boards in the room with the heating on for a month which should cover expansion problems.

~~~Laying The Boards ~~~
The tongue and groove system makes laying the boards easy and by using a fixing kit (contains spacers for the edges and a block to hammer against so you don't damage the tongues) you can easily hammer the boards together so there are no gaps. I used an ordinary tenon saw to cut my boards and had no problems with chipping the laminate. I had a jigsaw on hand as well but this one was not a variable speed and went too fast to cut in a straight line.

~~~ The Little Gap! ~~~
On reaching the far side of the wall I found that the last line needed to be 1 ½ inches wide. An absolute git of a cut to make along a board. Here my husband kindly helped as he has a very steady hand and was able to use the jigsaw to make this cut. Fortunately it didn't have to be perfectly straight as it was going to the edge, where you leave an expansion gap and cover this with some beading.

~~~ Finishing The Edges ~~~
Once the floor was laid I stuck the beading all round the edges. This is easy as the beading which I bought from Ikea had self adhesive strips. The difficult part is cutting the mitre joints for the corners, remember that your saw has a 45 degree angle! Aren't all those home improvement programmes useful? Sure give me some handy tips! Once the beading was fixed I just had a couple of edging strips to put along the edges by the doors (one cupboard, one door). Oh and the cupboard door had to be taken off and the bottom needed to be planed down, fortunately my next-door neighbour helped with this, planes are expensive.

~~~ The Bottom Line ~~~
The floor looks absolutely beautiful, heaps better than the tatty old carpet that previously lived there. I've put felt pads on the feet of all the furniture to protect it, you find these by the laminate flooring as well. All I need now is a nice rug to put in the middle of the room, I guess its time to hit the sales!
 

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