On Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:57:01 +0000, Andy Dingley
wrote:

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.

I don't understand why you have found it hard to stagger the joints. I
am currently laying laminate from Floors-2-Go and it's an absolute
doddle, even in the narrow "run" down to the doorway in an L-shaped
room, which would be equivalent to your hall, though admittedly not
quite so long. I find laminate amazing stuff, because it literally
transforms the whole "look" of the property in such a short time, much
more than carpet does. It kind of moves the property into a different
bracket.

The hardest part of all is undercutting door jambs/architraves to
slide the laminate under. But even that horrible job only takes about
ten minutes of grunting and cursing. (And two with the saw!)

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 ?

You don't need to hold it down - it won't move very far!

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.

Have you looked at the Westco brand from Homebase? That's what I'm
using to do the thresholds. £6.49 each strip, i.e. even cheaper than
Wickes.

MM