22 Apr Do-it-yourself laminate flooring and soundproofing

Laminate is one of the most popular flooring today. One of its distinguishing qualities is that almost everyone can do its styling. Before laying a laminate with your own hands, you need to familiarize yourself with a few rules.

If you purchased laminate in a store, in no case should you start laying immediately. Because this material has the ability to adapt to the humidity and temperature of the room. And with temperature fluctuations, the laminate can deteriorate. Therefore, it takes some time for this material to lie down in the apartment, about 2-3 days. For those who prefer to have a laminate flooring at home, they should also take into account that the temperature in the apartment should be constant, 20 degrees is considered ideal with an air humidity of about 70%.

Preparatory stage

Laminate is laid on chipboard, fiberboard, linoleum, concrete floor and parquet. Under no circumstances should this be done on carpeted floors.

It is also necessary to check the evenness of the surface, this is done using a special tool – the level. The unevenness of the floor, that is, its differences per square meter should be no more than 3 mm. If this value cannot be achieved, you will have to level the floors.

A few examples of how to do this:

The wooden surface must be sanded or cycled, this is done using special equipment;

A self-leveling screed must be poured onto the concrete floor. You can buy it at any hardware store.

Remove linoleum and then apply self-levelling screed.

And if warm floors are used in the apartment, then the screed should be water-based.

Next, do-it-yourself waterproofing and soundproofing of the apartment is carried out. This is done using a vapor barrier polyethylene film, which is overlapped with a thickness of 15 to 20 cm and secured with stationery tape. Foamed polyethylene is laid on top of it.

Laminate should be laid perpendicular to the wall on which there are windows. Because the light from the windows makes the seams almost invisible.

Necessary materials:

Roulette;

Ruler;

Electric jigsaw;

Pencil;

expansion wedges;

A hammer; brace.

It is not necessary to use any additional materials, such as cloves or glue, to fasten the boards.

Installation begins with the first two plates, lie close to the wall of the board, there should not be a gap of 1 cm, this is necessary so that the floor does not rise due to temperature changes. For indentation, you can use wedges, the width of which should be about 1-1.5 cm. Boards are installed in the lock to each other at an angle of 30 degrees.