I've some laminate flooring to lay; 4m^2 hallway, later followed by
about 5m^2 on the landing. The laminate is already purchased, B&Q's
clicky stuff. Smallish Victorian terrace, knocked-through lounge and
only one door downstairs.

If this was stone flagging, I'd go to Cormaic's excellent site for
advice. Any equivalent for laminate ?

Do I really need to stagger the end joints ? Normally I would,
certainly in a room, but this is a narrow hallway. It's pretty
difficult to lay the boards down in the confined space and I'm
thinking that the ugliness of the straight joint is outweighed by the
easier laying.

What do I do about expansion endways ? The front door end butts
against a marble step, the far end butts against the riser of the
carpetted stair. Is it OK to butt it flush by the door and just leave
a gap at the stair end (hidden by the carpet).

What should I do about fitting it against the long sides ? I have the
skirtings up and the boards trimmed to fit, but I'm unsure about how
to hold it down and in at the sides. Being a narrow hallway (5 strips
wide) there's no friction with the floor to hold it down, so I'm
really relying on some deliberate clamping from the sides to hold the
joints from opening up. Would the skirtings themselves be adequate ?

Any advice on threshold strips ? There's an aluminium carpet-carpet
strip down at the moment, and I was planing on stopping the laminate
10mm short of this and machining up an oak strip to fit into and over
the gap. The only commercial stuff I've seen was pretty ugly.


Thanks for any help

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Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods