Club 80-90 Forums

can I pick anyones brains here please?,my hallway is approx 2m by 5.5 m and there is 4 doors, staircase and a radiator in it, the problem I am having is that as I come in the front door to my right is another door and the staircase, opposite the front door at the other end is the kitchen door and to the right of that is another door, the radiator is on the left hand wall, the staircase is open underneath it.Where would be the best place to start from as every side has a recess for a doorway or radiator pipes from the floor,I have done flooring before but a long time ago and it was easier shaped room and I don't want to "cock" up too much flooring as it is too expensive to waste, thanks

I personally would work from your longest wall, that way you can control the width of the planks, if your last lengths laid are only say 10mm it would be a pain and it wouldn't look good, also if you started on your right then whose to say your last planks laid on your left would be parallel to the longest and most visable wall.

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I have always started from the centre of a room that way if one wall is out of true to its opposite the angled pieces at the sides are halved and don't look as bad. Starting from a side gives one glaring angled final cut.

Put a chalk line down the length of the longest run, use this mark to measure either side and that'll will help you to calculate the dimensions of the 'cuts' that will be required down the sides, if you can achieve a uniform appearance along the length, great, if not do your best without having narrow strips across the thresholds as they'll not only look naff but will have a tendency to ride up. This all makes perfect sense to me but.....

I nailed a very long length of 2x2 down the length of an oddshaped room, and worked from there to fill up one side of the room, then when that side was complete and secured (with wedges against the wall where I’d removed the skirting board) I removed the batten and started from what was laid and completed the room. Didn’t have any good key wall to work from, and actually no straight wall as it was a house of some vintage, to the batten was really necessary. Chalk mark serves the purpose of a reference line but you can’t bash the joints up against a chalk mark. I’d do it that way again even in an easy room as the slight uneven-ness in all walls can knock your laminate off whack.

thanks for the replies,I think I will pull the skirting off the wall and it looks my first board will have two holes cut out for the pipes!

RogerT wrote:I nailed a very long length of 2x2 down the length of an oddshaped room, and worked from there to fill up one side of the room, then when that side was complete and secured (with wedges against the wall where I’d removed the skirting board) I removed the batten and started from what was laid and completed the room. Didn’t have any good key wall to work from, and actually no straight wall as it was a house of some vintage, to the batten was really necessary. Chalk mark serves the purpose of a reference line but you can’t bash the joints up against a chalk mark. I’d do it that way again even in an easy room as the slight uneven-ness in all walls can knock your laminate off whack.

It's laminate flooring, what's this 'bashing' that you speak of???

Some of the cheaper stuff doesn’t click together that well, but I have to say it lasted well - I was in that house for 7 years.

RogerT wrote:Some of the cheaper stuff doesn’t click together that well, but I have to say it lasted well - I was in that house for 7 years.

Some of the cheaper stuff also have joins that are big enough to lose a match stick in, to be fair they've improved dramatically over the last 20 years.