After the birth of our first child I decided to become a childminder to enable me to stay at home to bring up our son. & also to give him other children to play with and to earn a bit of extra cash. It wasn’t long before I was complaining about the carpets looking shabby, and since they weren’t especially expensive when we brought them 8 years ago we decided to change them. Our neighbours had laminate floor covering in their lounge. They said it was wonderful to have with small children in the house and was very easy to clean. We had a good look at their floor, which had been fitted by the previous (bodge job) owners, and it didn’t look great. However it was good enough for us to see what a well laid floor would look like. Neither of us are particularly good at DIY and we knew that if we attempted to lay the floor ourselves we too would be labelled Mr and Mrs Bodge Job. So we called a local joiner who dealt with ‘Quick Step Uniclic’,
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Within 3 weeks of ordering our floor it was down. We had it laid in the hallway, lounge, dining room, kitchen and utility, around 30 square metres in total. The joiners made a great job.
Once the joiners had gone the first thing I did was clean it, which is where the trouble started.
First you have to sweep it (or vacuum it) which is okay. Then you have to go over it with a wet mop to get rid of the squashed biscuits and muddy footprints. THEN, to get rid of the smears and water marks the wet mop has left behind, you have to go over it with a dry mop too. So since I got rid of carpets (oh why did I do that?!) my work load has tripled! I know there’s lots of new cleaning equipment on the market, some that claims that you only need to run a duster cloth over your floor to pick up dust and wipe away smears, but I can’t see why I should have to pay out even more money a month. Bearing in mind that I still need to vacuum the skirting boards and corner where mops and fancy cleaning equipment doesn’t reach.
After just one week of having it I noticed some quite deep scratches by the front door. Apparently if you walk on the floor with your outdoor shoes on then any bits of grit stuck to your shoes will scratch the floor (carpet doesn’t scratch, I want my carpet back!) Quite often you will see an advert or flyer for laminated floors, the pictures usually show a small child charging around on a tricycle or pulling a building block trolley behind him. Well not in our house. Children’s toys and small vehicles are the main cause of scratches. My son has a horse on wheels that you sit on and manoeuvre with your feet. It was after I split up a scuffle over the horse in the hallway that I noticed the deep scratches where the children had been turning the horse around in one spot.
On the subject of children, I had a glass of wine the other night, which I knocked over. With carpet you usually only had a wine stain to contend with, but with laminated floor you have thousands of pieces of glass that you need to find before little hands and feet find them first.
My only real worry about having the floor in the first place was whether or not it would be cold. I was right to worry. It is cold and we wear slipper all the time now.
Well that’s all I have to say really, other than; If you like cleaning, have no children, are not remotely clumsy and have hot sweaty feet all year round then this floor is for you. If not, stick to carpet!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Different laminates have different levels of hardwearing. I never had problems with this and i have a cat that weighs 6.4KG that likes to balance using her claws!! :o) Nice op, Bev
kepler3001 12.02.2004 01:13
A great review, my parents have laminate flooring and it's full of dents so I have never considered buying it. Wayne : )
patriciat 11.02.2004 21:55
My hubby's been desperate to get rid of the carpets for ages. Must show him this and change his mind. Pat.t
Feb 11th, 2004
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