We tore it out in the fall- the carpet that is. We tore out the stinky nasty worn through carpet that was harboring who knows what in our temporary living room in the fall. You see, we’re moving rooms around in our house- and the living room is being replaced with the kitchen. Our flooring of choice was a Tarkett Laminate floor.
Now, when we bought this house, one of the things we noticed was that there was a sag in the house’s concrete floor in this particular room. It wasn’t hurting anything really, and old Summit County plans show a well right in the middle of the room! (Not sure how that worked!) Anyway, over the decades, the well or whatever got yanked, and we got some sag. Or maybe it was always like that and the previous owners didn’t care- who knows. You see, our home was built by a man who was a salesman for Cleveland Plumbing Supply. He was a SALESMAN, not a plumber, so he KIND OF knew some things about houses, enough to be dangerous. Lets just say there’s pipes all over the house and we still don’t know where they go!
Anyway, I’m writing this article, so let me get into the uneven floor: Droop!
Fill uneven floor with self leveling concrete or mortar
Simply, to fix an uneven floor, you have to MAKE it even. In our house- this required the use of about 800 lbs of concrete. Heavy, I know. We used a straight edge tool to GUESS the level that we needed, and kept moving and checking it all over the room.
Installing Tarkett Quiet-Cor
You can install laminate flooring directly over concrete, but in order to get the clickety clackity sound of hardwood, you have to add a little insulation between the two. Tarkett offers their Quiet-Cor foam that lays out like thick thick tearable vinyl floor. Because we had extra, and because the Quiet-Cor also acts as an insulator against a cold concrete floor, and because we were worried about some uneven spots in the concrete, we installed TWO layers of the Quiet-Cor- our doing so paid off.
Installing Laminate Floor
As with any flooring product, the first corner and the last corner always seem to be the toughest. Because our home has baseboard hot water heat (which I love) we had the added headache of installing the product underneath the pipes and their coverings! It took some finagling, and some re-reading of the directions and adapting them to our situation, but it worked. Oh, Find a great page from the manufacturer including instructions on how to install laminate floor from the manufacturer here.
My husband had his heart set on a particular pattern by Tarkett long before we moved into this house. It was a Japanese Seagrass pattern. It’s not a wood grain, but rather a pattern that suggests tightly bundled grasses all packed together. It comes in a dark and light variety- with the room that is to be the kitchen facing the North, and the limited natural light, we chose the lighter pattern. The pattern is definitely an alternate to wood grains in laminate, and one that can hide all sorts of dirt in case I don’t mop for a few…. weeks, I mean days.
In the end, we love the floor. Tarkett’s Laminate from their Cross Country division Seagrass Japanese is a simply stunning. We have received so many compliments on the design, it is unlike traditional wood grain yet still has the feel of wood.The room feels larger and more open.
My kids love running and playing on the flooring. It is a natural playground for them to ride their little ride-ons, push cars and trucks, or simply putting together a puzzle. Even though this room is primarily empty, my kids spend a lot of time in the room just playing. Right now, we have only the dining room table in the room that will be our kitchen and dining room once we get the kitchen remodel project underway!
As a mom, I really like how I can keep the flooring clean with ease. I don’t have to worry about whether the floor is clean or not when my kids and younger niece comes over to play and crawl around. I cringed every time they played on the previous carpet that was stained and smelled of cat urine (my guess).
Click here to find the nearest location that carries Tarkett brand products, including the Seagrass Laminate. Tarkett provides affordable, stylish products with excellent warranties.
Thank you Tarkett for supplying Seagrass Laminate for our project.
This was not a paid post. My own opinions were used based on my perceptions and experience. Thank you to Tarkett who supplied the product for review and the ongoing relationship with AkronOhioMoms.com. Check out the great selection of products at http://www.tarkettna.com.
Wow! Lotsa elbow grease!
We just used self-leveling concrete – it worked great (although you do lose 1-2 inches of height it wasn’t a big deal.
wow what an amazing job! looks like a ton of work, but you got it done! congrats for all your hard work!
Good evening,
Does anyone know about quit cor installation under ceramic tiles ?
Need help
Thanks
I found this post useful because I have hardwood floors in 2 rooms but in my other room the floors were beyond restoration haha so I was thinking of trying laminate. Thank you!
Wow, sorry to hear about your scissors accident, Rachel. Ouch! We really like the look and feel of the laminate floors. They are easy to keep clean too, or at least easy to clean. Would be much easier without 2 small kids and a dog that likes mud. LOL Yes, we have a view of the woods, the selling point of the house. Thus all the remodeling! lol
I love the laminate floor look. I “helped” my dad install vinyl tiles and lets just say all I acheived was stabbing myself in the hand with the scissors.
I love your big, huge window. Looks like a nice view of the woods?
We have installed laminate flooring in 3 of our rooms and I love it. They are very easy to keep clean and don’t collect dirt like carpet. Our first room took a couple of days until we figured out how to install it properly.
Your plumbing is too funny, I think old houses are a blast, we had a house that when the power went off, we had one light remain with power. Even when the whole neighborhood would be without power, we had the one light on. We called it the ghost light, we could never figure out where that line was coming from.
This is really a good idea…we will have to keep this in mind for our kitchen. Our floors are definitely uneven and we would probably have to do this.
Oh, how I wish I had this information when we did our kitchen!!! lol. Well, I wish my hubby had it 😛
Thanks 4 the step by step instructions! I want to do this in our kitchen but had no idea what kind of process was involved, so now I can show this to my hubby 🙂
I didn’t know the Quiet-Cor acts as an insulator (I am not a do it yourself person so all this info is new to me!!)
We just did this last Fall when we put in a wood floor in the kitchen. Had to level some spots, Lots of fun!
I have been wanting to try to install laminate in our family room. This looked a lot more difficult because of the uneven floor, so maybe we could do ours…
Thanks, Nicole. I know we will like the laminate in the kitchen once it is complete. However, my 2nd choice would be the luxury vinyl tile. If you like the look of tile but want something softer underfoot, you might want to look at Tarkett’s luxury vinyl tile.
The floor looks amazing…great job! We were looking into doing our kitchen in some sort of tile, but this may have just changed my mind! Thanks for the post.
Plus, laminate is a lot softer underfoot than hard tile!
Wow that looks so great I would love to put laminate flooring like that in our kitchen instead of the tile we have. I hate having tile in the kitchen. Everything that falls shatters and it’s so hard to clean sticky food off!
This is great – we are getting a new house soon, and it needs remodeling! Bookmarking this!
Thanks!
Amazing job! I know exactly what you mean about nasty carpets. We inherited our own from folks with dogs. You make it sound so simple. Thanks for the encouragement.
Can’t believe all you had to do to the floor! Love the “grass grain”
I’m about to buy a new house and I am pretty sure a big remodel will be needed – so I am going to need to go back through and hopefully learn a bunch from you guys and your experience
Looks great! We did a similar project a year ago. I’m glad things went smoothly for you. I don’t know if I would want to do it again.
My husband had to install laminate flooring to our house and it was such a pain especially in the garage where he had to even the floor to do it.
Thinking about doing this in my sunroom now. A cold slab with dog chewed carpet staring at me and I’m up for it right now!
Great idea…too bad I didn’t see this a year ago. Nice job!
You might be surprised. The hard part was the concrete and leveling out the floor. After that, the laminate installed quickly. This room was done in a few hours, including laying the padding. It was the concrete that was no fun. We kept buying bags, mixing it with water and watching it disappear on the floor. Then we would go get more, and more, and more. We had no idea how much we would need!
This looks like a ton of work! But it looks great!