Pergo-type flooring

I received a pile of used flooring from a friend who redid their kitchen. I have no idea what brand it is. What I have in mind is replacing a section of carpet in the dining room/entryway about 200 sq ft. After watching some installation videos on You Tube it doesn't seem like rocket science, but I'm wondering about joints where the new floor turns to carpet. What do you do about that? Do they make generic strips to finish the exposed edge of the flooring?

Any other caveats?

put a pad under it from the store, and while in the laminate row take a piece with you and pick up some similar colored transition strips.

then curse yourself forever for not getting real wood because laminate sucks. not totally, and you make like it, but i hate it and i've been installing it for 16 years.

I did a small laundry room for cheap and it looks great. If it gets wet or ruins - we don't care as we have gotten 5+ years out of it.

Full kitchens of it looks fake to me. I am saving to do actual hardwood in my dining and living room......

Datsun310Guy wrote: Full kitchens of it looks fake to me.

If you go with plank laminate and be mindful of where you put your joints (don't just take the last drop and start the new row with it), it can look really good in a larger space. But you're right - it's not hardwood.

Me? My last house was over 80yrs old and hardwood just doesn't make me all tingly anymore. I'll go laminate again because of cost, durability and ease of replacement if I tire of it.

I'm not a fan of it in kitchens and bathrooms though. MDF will swell like silly in water. I'd actually go with a (I know...) rolled product in a kitchen or bathroom. Tiles are too hard on the feet and too hard to clean for this lazy E36 M3.

It's much better than hardwood!!

I've put a bunch of it down over the years and DIY laminate is so much better than most DIY hardwood floors.

1) don't use it in a wet area.

2) look for the sound deadening mats to put under it. The clackety clack mats that are supposed to make it replicate the sound of a wood floor over an above ground pier & beam foundation make it tough to live with.

3) when installing it if you knock a piece of the laminate off the end, just replace the piece rather than installing it and touching the end up. This way you can damp mop it with no long term issues if you need to.

It's fast and easy to install which makes it fast and easy to replace one day when you are tired of it.

Costco is your friend because they have some very nice looking high quality stuff for a very reasonable price. Every time I shop for the stuff, if Costco has the look I want, they are always a lot cheaper than anyone else.

Laminate doesn't scratch nearly as easy as a wood floor and they make all kinds of transitions for going from wood to carpet, tile or whatever. The hassle in your case will be finding the matching transitions unless you know what brand or where your friend bought it.

I just usually take a small piece of laminate and put it up beside the transistions to find a brand and color I like.

I even laid a full floor the day before I was headed into the hospital for back surgery so you know it's easy.

I hate the way it sounds when you walk on it. Even when it's properly padded.

I guess I've never seen the "good" stuff. I've walked on a few dozen different laminate floors when we were looking at houses........and have a few friends with them.

None of them look right or feel right. Can't stand it.

I have but in "the good stuff" before. I do not really like it but it fit the need for the time (refresh to sell.)
Here is a money saving tip: They will try to sell you the corner, half round moldings that are wood colored. These are damn expensive.
Instead, use a much cheaper white half round molding the matches the baseboards.

of course I read Prego at first look

My mom did her last house in the stuff, and it makes me queasy. It looks like wood but feels like a rubber mat. That feeling is the main reason I went with engineered hard wood, the other reason is that it's instantly apparent to anyone with a little bit of experience that it's not real hardwood. Oh, and some laminates are VERY easy to scratch. I saw one laminate sample that I was able to scratch with my thumbnail. The flooring I went with has an aluminum oxide coating that makes it tough to scratch up.

I did help a friend put some down in her house recently, it's called 'burnished fruitwood' and if you don't look at the seams it looks quite nice. It's holding up well, no scratching so far.

I don't understand how any laminate could scratch easily, it's a formica type of finish and that stuff doesn't scratch.

The last laminate I put down was a scraped wood finish complete with the peaks & valleys. There's no way laminates look like paneling, except possibly the very, very cheapest.

As far as feeling like rubber they make a rubber vinly version, but it's a glue down. I've seen this in many public places.

formica scratches if you look at it wrong.....

I'm no fan of laminate flooring. I like real wood.

However, the house I live in has some. It's durable as crap. My 5 kids have NEVER been able to harm it in any way, regardless of the beating they dish out.

We recently had to do a termite repair in the floor of the dining room, which meant replacing the flooring. After the good experience we'd had, I decided to replace it with similar. We used a cheap laminate flooring. Again, durable as crap.

It was not that easy to install. Tongue and grooves were fussy to get together. Pergo is different.

Also, the end joinery would make it pretty difficult to change where your joints fall. If you use anything less than a full piece, you won't have a decent end locked joint.

The old floor had a pad under it which looked like thin green rubber mat. The new padding I installed was more like a thin foam, with foil on one side. The old floor made obnoxious noises. The new one does not.

So, I guess all padding is not the same.

I am a huge fan of hardwood, but we put down quality laminate in our place, it's OK, looks good from a distance and is pretty tough. Ours has a 50 yr warranty, that is a long time. It I ever find my forever home I want real wood.

There's all kinds of different laminates out there, as well as something I saw which really opened my eyes: it's a bamboo floor which looks a lot like cherrywood, really nice looking stuff. I discovered that it's a bamboo substrate with basically a 'laser printed' pattern on that which is then coated with about maybe .3mm of some sort of satin finish coating. Looks great, but you can scratch it with a fingernail too. I think the easly scratched laminate I saw was done similar to this stuff and the clear coating was just cheap crap.

My mom's Pergo was a 'floating floor' which was necessary because the house was on a slab. (On that subject: screw a slab house. Gimme crawl space any time.) Anyway, the Pergo was put over a thin foam pad (it was advertised as 'cushioned') and the flooring was 'click together' stuff which, when completed, was supposed to be one large piece 'floating' on the foam. Or at least that's the theory. All I know is that walking on it, my eyes said 'wood' and my feet said 'rubber' which made for a very disquieting feeling.

I think most laminate flooring installs are floating installations.

Regarding slabs: I like crawl spaces better, but will never build another one if I have my choice.

OP: Are you talking about solid wood flooring, wood composite or something made of a linoleum type material? Seems to be some confusion in this thread about what you might be dealing with.

Do the pieces interlock with tongue/groove or are they just individual parts that butt up against each other?

We re-did the entire upstairs of our house in a composite wood product that snaps together. It's totally brilliant, feels like real wood and the toenails of our 3 dogs haven't put a scratch in it. Easy to install (removing the carpet was more work).

I have a couple boxes of transition strips left over (Pergo model 36068 if you want to look up the color) you can have, if you can figure out how to get them. Shipping may be a bit pricey.

Mannington brand laminate - good stuff, great looks, good prices. It will be going into the majority of the first floor at our new house.

Why?

• Tougher finish than hardwood - great for dog owners
• 12mm thickness "sounds" like hardwood when you walk on it
• Prices are very reasonable (<$3/sq ft)
• great warranty

In reply to ddavidv:

It's not genuine hardwood, it's a synthetic per the thread description, but I have no idea what brand it is. There's nothing stamped on the back. It's got a tongue/groove system.

SVreX wrote: It was not that easy to install. Tongue and grooves were fussy to get together. Pergo is different. Also, the end joinery would make it pretty difficult to change where your joints fall. If you use anything less than a full piece, you won't have a decent end locked joint. The old floor had a pad under it which looked like thin green rubber mat. The new padding I installed was more like a thin foam, with foil on one side. The old floor made obnoxious noises. The new one does not. So, I guess all padding is not the same.

Pergo does go together really nicely. There are non-pergo brands that have grooves that go together pretty easy like pergo. I agree the vapor barrier you choose to go underneath makes a huge difference. the one we used in our house was like a black plastic sheet. The slab we laid the floor on must have some low spots, you can feel the floor "sink" ever so slightly when you walk across 2 places, you can hear the plastic vapor barrier crinkle.

The thin foam vapor barrier stuff is nice and quiet.

Also I have to highly reccomend a tool like this:

Use it to cut the trim/moulding at the base of doorways, so the laminate floor can slide underneath the door frame when installing, rather than trying to cut the floor to fit around the base of the door frame (it will always look like E36 M3 if you do it that way) The tool makes the job a piece of cake and the end results look much better.

do you sell pergo type canoes?