im about to lay some flooring in my bathroom. I laid laminate in my
old flat about 5 years ago and truth be told it was an ok job - apart
from corners and cuttings whicj made it look pretty cheap.. So im
wondering anybody any ideas on how best to cut round toilet, central
heating pipes etc... Im using quality products and dont want to make a
complete mess

any ideas please..

wrote in message
ups.com...
im about to lay some flooring in my bathroom. I laid laminate in my
old flat about 5 years ago and truth be told it was an ok job - apart
from corners and cuttings whicj made it look pretty cheap.. So im
wondering anybody any ideas on how best to cut round toilet, central
heating pipes etc... Im using quality products and dont want to make a
complete mess
any ideas please..
When I did mine I took a piece of printer paper (A4) and cut it almost into
strips, like a sort of comb.
Then taped it to the floor by the pedestal so the cut strips were going up
the side of the pedestal.
Then for each strip, pushed it down against the base, and marked with a
pencil.
After all that, removed paper, with lots of little pencil marks revealing
pretty good shape of base.
Slight fun aligning paper / floor / laminate to make sure cut started in
right place,
but end result not bad - about 1-2mm gap all round, which filled with mastic
OK.
hth
Neil

wrote:
im about to lay some flooring in my bathroom. I laid laminate in my
old flat about 5 years ago and truth be told it was an ok job - apart
from corners and cuttings whicj made it look pretty cheap.. So im
wondering anybody any ideas on how best to cut round toilet, central
heating pipes etc... Im using quality products and dont want to make a
complete mess

any ideas please..

James,

First rule: Laminate flooring 'is' cheap. You will always be trying to
imitate something
that is 'not so' cheap. Laminates vary in quality, according to type of
installation (i.e.
location at which they will be installed), and therefore
durability/suitability of their performance at that local, and also how
they compare, aesthetically, to the material they have been
manufactured to look like.

In a bathroom, only those laminates that look like bathroom flooring
should be chosen. An example are those that look like tiles. Anything
else, unless stated otherwise, will typically not be suited to regular
contact with water, as occurs within a bathroom. "Wet-room" laminates
will have been designed/engineered to withstand constant soaking, and
specifications for laying them will differ from laying conventional
laminate.

Assuming you have the right product for the job, I would suggest the
following...

Cutting round toilet:
If possible, remove the toilet. Lay floor underneath. Cut round waste
pipe. allow holes for toilet pan fixing screws and inlet feed pipe.
Re-position toilet and draw outine of pan onto laminate. Remove pan and
apply bead of silicone within outline of pan drawn on floor. Re-fix pan
and screw down onto bead of silicone. Alternatively, slide sheet of
paper under toilet base and draw outline of pan. Include a reference
point on the paper that coincides with a fixed point on already
laminated floor. This way you can assemble lengths of laminate on a
bench, overlay your template (from the x=0, y=0 coordinates) and
transfer the pan outline onto the dry-fixed laminate, cut accordingly,
disassemble and refit in situ. If you can't get anything under the
toilet, then you're going to have to use an adjacent wall as a datum
and scribe/project the pan outline onto some paper/posterboard, using a
profile gauge that can project the footprint of the pan onto the paper,
which will marry up with the pan base, when the x,y coordinates are
changed. This can be tricky, so practice with card until you get it
right... I find that the projection of the outline is usually
correct... it's the point of origin that causes problems.

Heating pipes:
Use a similar procedure to "project" pipe positions. Drill suitable
holes and cut down to them with a jigsaw. Keep the waste material and
glue this piece back into the gap behind the pipe(s) then cover with
purpose made pipe-rings that should be available as part of the
laminate system... they look like flat doughnuts and match the flooring
pattern/finish.

One tip is: don't use the expansion gap scotia/quadrant, that is sold
to match the flooring. Instead, use softwood edging and paint/stain to
match the skirting or flooring. The stuff that comes with the laminate
is rubbish... it's made from a kind of pulp and disintegrates easily.
It's also hard to fix without damaging and doesn't last. Far easier to
buy scotia/quadrant in wood and decorate to suit.

HTH
deano.