Carpet to Laminate

A recently completed flooring job ... removing 20 year old living room carpet and replacing it with a fresh looking laminate floor. I've got five photos below that show the stages of the job and details of how I work. Some of the photos are of smaller sections of the floor to provide a little privacy for my customer and their room but you can see the work I do.

This photo shows a 20 year old carpet that the customer wanted replacing in their living room.

I started by delivering the new flooring 3 days before fitting so it had time to acclimatise to the new property. Laminate needs this.

First job is to remove the carpet and underlay to see what is underneath.

In this case it was pretty reasonable with just the carpet grippers and staples that the previous fitters had used.

Next up is a highlight of how I work. I removed the grippers but also I remove the staples rather than just hammering them flat ... a small thing that nobody will ever see but I know I will have done it right.

The brown marks under the grippers were glue residue and nothing to worry about.

New underlay down and I sealed the joints with aluminium backed tape

It is important to use spacers to allow for an expansion gap. Laminate will naturally expand and contract by small amounts depending on temperature and needs this space to allow that to happen.

For those that haven't had laminate before this does not mean it moves when in use!

Finished by adding scotia to cover the expansion gap and threshold bars that match the new floor.

I also had to plane the bottom of the door to raise it a little so it does not rub on the threshold.

This photo doesn't show the 4 metre width of the room and all the lines on the flooring looking really neat but the customer noticed it and commented on how good it looked and how happy they were with the new flooring.