Bamboo, hardwood, cork or laminate flooring… As a beginner what do you choose? Well after having been faced with this question on several do it yourself remodelling jobs, I decided to write a blog covering my experiences and what I’ve found over that period of time. So join me as I explore the fascinating world of bamboo hardwood laminate floor coverings for beginners.
The list is endless when it comes to the choice of floor coverings available to us today. Usually the key factor in deciding which of these to use is price. Then ususally it is determined by the look that is needed, the durability of the flooring, it’s use and whether it will be used in the bathroom, kitchen, living room, bedroom or basement. Of all of these, when it comes to beginners, my choice is hardwood laminate flooring or bamboo laminate flooring. I’ll explain why later on.
Hardwood Flooring
Another factor that needs to be considered is whether the home where you are laying the flooring is where you are living or an investment property that you are remodelling to improve your rental return or the overall value of the property. If you are laying flooring where you live you may be tempted to go for the more expensive hardwood flooring. This comes in several different types that include in decreasing order of hardness, Mahogany, Hickory, Maple, White Oak, Ash, Beech, Birch or Pine. Each of these has huge differences in hardness, colour, texture, the tightness of the grain and how many knots occur in the wood e.g. pine tends to be softer, less expensive with a lighter colour that suits more contemporary dwellings whereas mahogany hardwood has a dark rich colour that suits more rustic, antique settings and with it’s incredible durability, will last through the generations. As a flooring option for your own home, these hardwoods are often preferred as they give a more solid, richer experience for your home. They come in either wide or narrow planks with the wider planks possibly being prone to cupping or warping if the wood is not of the harder types. Often the higher cost of these materials can be prohibitive and they do take more maintenance – particularly if the hardwood is one of the softer ones. Knocking, scuffing and staining can be a problem though it is nice to know that down the track you can always get them sanded back, repolished or stained and they are as good as new.
This can also be another of those negatives associated with laying hardwood floors. They usually require professional installation as the use of strong glues or nails are needed to attach them to the sub floor (the flooring beneath). It is handy though that floor boards can be layed on just about any existing flooring including other floorboards or concrete. Unless you are a very handy do It yourselfer, the machinery and skills required to lay the boards can often stop the home renovator from attempting the job. A combination of saws, levelling equipment, underlay, industrial sanding machines and a good knowledge of glues and varnishes to finish the job are required. This is yet another expense when considering laying hardwood floors.
If you have recently bought an investment property that has carpeting and you want to renew the flooring, it wise to have a quick look under the carpet to see if the property already has quality floorboards. If it does – often they will look old and dirty, but with some professional work, they can come up beautifully.
I recently wanted to remodel a one bedroom unit that I own which was part of a duplex building that was roughly 50 years. It had clearly been a single house at one point and was later split into 2 units with a bedroom and living room having been added for the 1 bedroom unit. The unit had dingy carpet throughout with linoleum tiles in the bathroom. When we lifted the carpet, we found oak hardwood flooring in the kitchen and hallway, and pine floorboards in the living room and bedroom. We simply hired a sanding professional to come and sand back the hardwood floor boards. Since the oak was much darker than the pine, they stained the pine with a darker wood stain, and finished with a laquer. This took all of about one and a half days. The first day was spent sanding with a first coat of stain. The second day they sanded back and relaquered. The result was wonderful allowing us to charge hight rent and increasing the value of the unit allowing us to draw down more of the equity to invest in other properties.
Bamboo or Cork Flooring
If the cost of the standard oak or pine hardwood flooring is too much, then two cheaper alternatives include bamboo and cork flooring. If you are interested in environmental conservation then either of these options will also appeal to you. Both are very renewable resources. Bamboo is a grass that takes 5 to 7 years to grow so each crop can be harvested in that time and then it renews within another 5 to 7 years. Alternatively cork comes from the cork tree which takes 25 years to grow, but the cork can be harvested from that tree every 9 years for the next 200 years.
Both cork and bamboo are very durable resisting scuffing and guauging. Cork is also resistant to pressure having the ability to bounce back after having had a heavy object placed upon it. It is also impervious to water due to a natural waxy substance it contains called suberin.
Bamboo, Cork or Hardwood Laminate Flooring
The next alternative to actual hardwood, cork or bamboo is a laminate floor and includes hardwood laminate flooring, bamboo hardwood laminate flooring or cork laminate flooring. I’ll be talking about the bamboo hardwood laminate flooring for those beginners that wish to install laminate flooring themselves. These floors are made of several layers made from a variety of materials each of which serves a different function. The layers include melomine or mdf particle board for the core, with sound, heat proofing and shock absorbing layers as well as a top layer that includes a photograph of the actual bamboo hardwood that is being mimicked. Although the technology used in recent years has allowed for these hardwood laminate floors to appear real and genuine, there are many out there that still have that artificial look to them. To guarantee that these floors look genuine, you can use an engineered pine flooring. This has an actual layer of the real pine hardwood as the top layer that allows it to look as realistic as the genuine product. The wood for this top layer has been reclaimed from old buildings that have been set to be demolished. To all intents and purposes, the flooring appears to be real even though it is primarily made of plywood.
Bamboo hardwood laminate flooring usually comes in varying width planks, but can now also come in tiles. The planks are made with a tongue and groove system on all four edges that allow for easy installation. This is perfect for the beginner as they just snap or click together and many of these systems no longer require glue. The boards come with a ready to use finish and once they have been laid, they are ready to use immediately. Bamboo laminate hardwood flooring is resistant to scuffs, marking, staining and dirt. They are easily kept clean with vacuuming or the occasional mopping with a damp cloth and a gentle floor cleaner. It is important though that any spills are quickly mopped up particularly in kitchen areas so that moisture does not build up which can lead to warping. The fact that this type of flooring can be laid by the do it yourself handyman means an added saving without the need to call in professionals. This saving is in addition to the savings made on the material itself.
When choosing the supplier of your hardwood lemonate boards, it is important to check the quality of the tongue and groove system they are using. Some boards simply slide straight into each other and can just as easily slide back out again. This is fine once the floor has been laid, but can prove annoying whilst laying it. A better system is one where one board has to be liften on the side opposite the joining side, for the board to be able to slide in. When the board is then dropped back down, it locks in and can only be removed by lifting it again before sliding it out.
Another point to consider when choosing your supplier is how many meters or feet squared of flooring do they provide in a pack. Usually the more you order the cheaper it becomes as well. It is also wise to order an extra pack or two of boards as mistakes are bound to occur no matter how proficient a hanyman you may think you are.
Finally, and this is primarily the case for bamboo hardwood engineered laminate floors, make sure you get all the floor boards you need in the one go. The reason for this is the color of the bambo can change greatly between crops and if your boards use a layer of actual bamboo on top, it is important that all your lamenate boards come from the one batch so that there is no variation in the floring once you have laid it.
Finally, the manufacturers should provide you with a tool kit for installation that will include spacers and a Z shaped hammering tool – more on these later.
There are so many wonderful advantages that hardwood laminated flooring give you. With todays technology, they appear to be genuine hardwood, cork or bamboo flooring. They can be installed by the do it yourself handyman doing away with the need for professional and costly installashion. The material used in the makeup of the laminated hardwood boards reduces the cost of the flooring markedly resulting in an overall great look at a fraction of the price of the genuine article. This makes them perfect for renovating or remodeling investment properties or even your own home.
I was recently in a position where I needed to remodel the lower living area of my mum’s house. The area already had a bedroom, living room and study as well as the laundry and faced into the underground rock that the upstairs house was built upon. To this I needed to add a wall to separate the entire area from the underhouse rock. A kitchette was also added and the ceiling rafters covered with plaster board. We decided that the perfect solution for the flooring would be laminated bamboo flooring. We ordered our flooring from Ikea – that wonderful home living store from Sweden that allows you to furnish and fit out your entire house. They have wonderful flat pack furniture and all of their products are of the highest quality. This includes their hardwood laminate timber and bamboo flooring. I believe they also have cork flooring as well. They have the tongue and groove system that requires you to lift the board before fitting it to the next board.
Something else that needs considering is the underlay. There are 2 main types of underlay – the first is a form of felt that can be used if you are laying the floating laminate boards on a non concrete surface that is very flat. This includes carpet, linoleum or other floorboards and acts as a sound repressant in the case of floor boards or lino. The other type of floor underlay is a thicker dense fibre cardboard style underlay that is more suited if your sub floor is slightly uneven or requires a greater form of sound muffling. In our case we were laying the floors on concrete that was very uneven and not level. In fact we hired builders to come in and pour a layer of cement to both even out the floor and to make it level. As it turned out they didn’t do a completely satisfactory job as the floor still wasn’t quite even enough for the bamboo timber laminate boards we were using. They required no more than 3mm difference in the level of the floor over a meter of floor length. The resultant job of the concreters had a greater difference than this. The thicker underlay that we used certainly helped but it wasn’t quite enough. As a result we ended up with two small gaps occurring. If you find that your cement floor isn’t flat enough for the laminate boards, you do have some alternatives. The first is to use a levelling agent over the concrete. This is a powder that is mixed with water to a slightly runny consistency and then poured over the concrete. It will self level into the lower areas of the concrete and then harden, making the concrete level overall. The problem with this levelling agent Is that it is extremely expensive.
The other solution to an uneven floor is to use thicker hardwood laminate flooring boards that allow a greater unevenness in the underlying sub floor. The bamboo laminate floor boards we used were only about 5mm thick. Obviously the thicker you go on the flooring boards, the more money you pay.
The final part of the underlay which is only necessary when you are laying the laminate floor over a concrete slab is a polyethylene plastic layer. This forms a barrier to moisture rising from the concrete into the floor boards. Most laminate hardwood flooring doesn’t handle continuous moisture well and will warp if exposed to it continuously. Concrete is notorious for rising moisture or damp particulalry in basements and rumpus rooms. A plastic barrier is therefore necessary which needs to run underneath the laminated hardwood planks to about one inch up the wall on every side. The plastic barrier that appears on the wall is then hidden with skirting boards.
Once having ordered the flooring, it is often necessary to stack the packs of boards horizontally in the room you will be installing them into. This is necessary to acclimatize the boards as they can expand and contract depending on the level of humidity and temperature existing in the room. It is far better to have them acclimatised to the room having expanded or contracted as much as they will rather than laying them without acclimatizing them and finding that they then either expand, causing warping of the boards or contract causing gaps.
Yes this is possible even when using the system of tongue and groove mentioned above since this system only locks the boards in length ways. It does not lock the boards at the ends of the boards. If the boards contract, they can leave gaps at the end.
The next point to consider is that you have all the necessary tools required to install the boards. These include a knife to cut the underlay, scissors to cut the polyethylene plastic barrier, a good sized handsaw for cutting the timber boards themselves, a square for making sure the ends of the laminate boards are square, a tape measure and the spacers and Z shaped tool provided by the manufacturers and a good hammer. Also once you have finished laying the bamboo laminate boards, there will be a gap between them and the walls. You will need to use either an edging or skirting boards to hide this gap. The gap is necessary to allow expansion of the laminate hardwood without warping. Both the moulding and the skirting boards can usually be obtained from your floating floor supplier, but are usually cheaper if bought from your local hardware store. In this case they will come unfinished and require a coat of undercoat paint followed by top coat paint in a colour that suits the walls and the laminate flooring you are laying taking into account the specific colour of the cork, bamboo, oak, maple, pine or other hardwood boards you may have. To install the edging properly, it will also be necessary for you to have a mitre box or a drop down saw that allows you to change the angle of the saw so that you can cut 45 degree angels on your skirting boards or moulding so that they fit together nicely in each corner.
Once you have everything ready to go you need to choose the direction the laminate harwood boards will lay – usually they lay lengthways in the direction where most of the light is coming from i.e. in the direction of the window. Once you have the floor level, the plastic barrier laid, and the underlay down, you can take the first board and begin. Make sure you follow the manufacturers directions to the T but basically the method involves laying the first hardwood laminate board down against a wall with the spacers in between the laminate board and the wall. Then fit the next bamboo laminate board at its end, and keeping doing this until you hit the opposite wall. Then measure how much room is left allowing for space at the end, cut a length of board equal to this and place this in the gap between the last board and the wall. Use the offcut as the starting point for the next row. This makes sure that the joins between the ends of the planks are offset from one row to another which adds strenght to the bamboo laminte floor and improves its appearance. Continue doing this until you have covered the entire floor.
You will need to buy some form of moulding either from the laminate flooring board supplier or from a hardware store to cover the ends of the boards at doorways leading outside. I used a C shaped piece of stainless steel channelling that I placed over the end and glued to the concrete underneath. You may also want to use T shaped mouldings between the boards at doorways leading into other rooms. I chose to run the boards staight through the door so that the hardwood flooring was continuous without a break. To use this method though you need to be able to push the floorboard straight into the next floorboard whilst lying flat. I therefore needed to slice a little bit off the tongue of the tongue and groove of one laminated board so that this could be achieved.
Another tip worth noting is to cut the bottoms off door posts at the height of the bamboo hardwood laminate floor boards so that they can slide underneath. This saves cutting the boards around the door posts which will likely appear unsightly since there will always be gap between the door posts and the boards. Sliding the laminated boards under the doorposts eliminates this problem.
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