Laminate flooring doorjamb trick
 

Starting laminate flooring in a doorway going out into the room is easy.
Undercut jambs and slip first row underneath. What then, do you do when you
get to a door on the opposite side of the room, with the doorway running
with the direction of the flooring? I recently did a hallway with 8 doors,
so I developed a trick for my own use to do this, and it worked quite well.
I thought I would share this with others.
As you progress across the room, plan and start shifting your stagger
joints so that you can insure that the doorway will end up with a flooring
joint somewhere inside it's width. My flooring hooked up going right to left
when facing the unlaid area of the floor. The last row was allowed to start
1/2" from the wall, temporarily. I laid the last row of narrowed pieces of
flooring until I got to the doorway. This piece had to be cut into an "L"
shape to protrude into the door opening. Using a posterboard template, I cut
the piece to conform very closely to the jamb and trim of the door. Taking a
block, I tapped the flooring under the jamb and trim 3/8" toward the
starting wall. Fitting another "L shaped piece of flooring between the end
of the previous piece and the other jamb assembly finishes out the doorway
and gets you TO the other jamb. Careful coping of the cuts is required for
this. A special hook hammering tool sold for the purpose is used at the
starting point to tap the flooring in your installation direction to slip
the freshly cut area underneath the door jamb and trim. This leaves a
doorway with very nicely fitted pieces of flooring, with no gaps. The
flooring installation instructions should have directions on how to handle
the butt joints of the flooring in a situation where the flooring cannot be
tilted upward to allow locking. Maybe this will help someone else at
installing this type of flooring.
I would be interested in other's techniques in dealing with this and
other tricky installation situations of various materials.

RJ