Laminate Flooring: Is It Right for You?

LESLIE: Richard in Missouri wants to take on a flooring project. And how can we help you?

RICHARD: Yes. I’m remodeling an older house and it’s a concrete floor.

TOM: OK.

RICHARD: And I’m thinking about putting laminate lined – going to put laminate flooring in the kitchen and tile in the bathroom. Does it have to be perfectly level and if it does, how would be the easiest way to do that?

TOM: Well, it doesn’t have to be perfectly level; it has to be somewhat flat. I mean, the laminate floor will take a certain level of unevenness in the floor. But the nice thing about laminate is there’s a very thin layer of like insulation underlayment.

LESLIE: Like a foam sheet.

TOM: Yeah, like foam sheeting that goes underneath it. And then you lock together the pieces and the whole thing floats on top of the concrete floor, so it’s a perfect solution for covering a concrete floor. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s completely level; it just can’t have any kind of huge bumps in it.

LESLIE: Like, you know, you can’t put it over the dog’s toy. (Tom chuckles)

RICHARD: Whoa. You’ve seen my work before. (Tom and Leslie laugh) Well, that was my main question because I – it’s fairly well level but it’s just, you know, not perfectly level.

TOM: Yeah, well, I put laminate floor in a very old, 1886 house that was very unlevel – uneven – and it did bend and twist with the floor but it’s not supposed to do what I did with it. So it will take a little bit of unevenness but, for the most part, just make sure it’s as flat as possible.

RICHARD: OK. And to fill all of the – what’s the best stuff to fill the cracks with.

LESLIE: Oh, you want to use an epoxy patching compound. You can’t go ahead and put concrete over concrete because it’ll never stick. You know, when we redid our basement floor, we pulled up the carpeting and the concrete underneath was just a mess; I mean crumbling and falling apart and uneven. And we used something called Abocrete from a company called Abatron.

TOM: Yeah, correct.

LESLIE: I always get the company name confused. But Abatron is their website as well, so you can find out all of the epoxy patching compounds that they have. And that will, you know, self-level, it will smooth out the floor and it will stick very, very, very effectively to concrete and that’s the best way to go about it.

RICHARD: OK. That was my question. I sure appreciate it.

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Oh, it’s our pleasure.

TOM: (overlapping voices) Good luck with that project, Richard. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.