Laminate Flooring Installation

Laminate gives you a hard, scratch-resistant wood-look floor for less than hardwood, and today's boards are thicker, quieter and far more water-resistant than the laminate of twenty years ago. It's a floating floor, which means the install lives or dies on two things: a flat subfloor and the right underlayment. We check both. Over concrete, that means a moisture barrier — important in a Pacific Northwest basement or slab-on-grade home. Over a wood subfloor, it means finding and fixing the squeaks and dips first, because laminate will telegraph every one of them. We plan the layout so the boards run the right direction for the room, leave proper expansion space at the walls and under the trim, and finish the edges so nobody can tell where the floor stops.