"The3rd Earl Of Derby" wrote in message
k...
Mark Trueman wrote:
Hi,

Currently our front room and dining room are joined (by a 1.5 m
archway) and have the same laminate flooring running through. We are
going to change the front room laminate to new laminate this weekend,
but leaving the dining room laminate in place. I have 2 questions
about this process.

1. Whats the best way to cut the laminate where the 2 rooms join. I
was thinking of just using a tenon saw to do a deep score and then
snapping the laminate (if i cant saw all the way through), but any
other ideas would be great. The subfloor is floorboards by the way. I
suppose a router could be used, but i dont have one.

2. Where the new laminate and the old laminate join we want to have as
seamless a joint as possible, but there has to be some kind of strip
to cover the join (as i assume i need an expansion gap here). We dont
want one of the metal ones, and thought maybe a bit of beading
stained and varnished would suffice. Is this going to be resistant
enough to foot traffic. Any other ideas as to a non-intrusive
mechanism for joining the new and old flooring (one is dark oak and
one is light beech)

I know you don't have a router but I expect you could hire one and this is
how I managed to join my two floors together. Forget about scoring and
snapping, you'll have to score almost all the way through and even then
it'll leave a very ragged edge. Use a router like I did with a straight
cutting bit and run it against a straight-edge. You could always try a
circular saw with a fine blade run against a straight-edge but you might
find that it chips the surface. Use a good quality double sided tape to fix
the straight-edge in position, you'll want it fixed along its entire length
or it's likely to flex, you should get good adhesion to the laminate anyway,
you don't want it to move once you start. Both options will probably require
a manual cut at either end to finish. Next you want to join the new to the
old, I used a biscuit joiner to do the business although setting the height
was a bit of a fiddle to get right. Real chuffed with the outcome and the
floor is level with no thresholds or any other protrusions to marr the
effect.

Grumble