Cost for laminate hardwood flooring

[Clarence Martin]

Got a small room in the house that used to be a home office and before that, it was originally the old Dining Room. Got carpet on the floor covering the old linoleum tile , The carpet is getting old and starting to smell. Yes, I know , clean the carpet! LOL

But what I would really like to do is ripe up the carpet and old tile and replace it all with a Laminate hardwood floor !!!! Room is 8* Feet x 8 Feet.

What would be an average cost for :


A. A DIY job ???


B. Contracted out ????

[Dan Keeling]

I installed some in our kitchen. The material ran about $2.50 a sqft. It was the thicker kind with the pad attached. Bought the kit with the edge hammering block, shims, and the tool to hit pieces close to the wall.. about another $20. It took about a day and a half to do approx 200 sq feet‚ but that was with a hand saw and working around cabinets.

[Mark W Pugh]

Kinda along the topic, who makes the thickest hardwood laminate manufactured flooring. I saw a video that had a 1/4" hardwood laminate wear layer. I can not find this product anywhere. Any ideas?

[Larry Edgerton]

Check out "Really cheap floors" or something close to that. Its a clearing house for Shaw and can have some really cheap flooring.

Larry

[Timothy Wolf]

Mark, I think the product might be a Kentwood product.

Clarence, don't buy any product for less than $2 a sq foot it is almost always garbage, When I used to do wood floors I would have charged my daily minimum of $250 for my labor plus the cost of materials to install it. I'm also a big fan of the laminate that already has the pad attached. For materials figure out $ per sq ft and add 10%

[Jason Roehl]

Just to clarify here, but "hardwood" and "laminate" don't apply to the same product. Yes, some laminate makers use "hardwood" as a marketing ploy, but there's no hardwood in it, unless it's as pulp. Laminate flooring is fake. It looks fake, it doesn't last very long, and it sounds fake when you walk on it. But it's cheap. There is another product family out there called "Engineered Hardwood Flooring", which looks like hardwood flooring, but it is essentially 3/8" thick (or thereabouts) plywood with a hardwood veneer on top and a factory finish. Some of them can be carefully refinished once, but it's easy to sand through the wear layer.

Once the laminate gets wet, it's done.

[rudy de haas]

hi:

Laminated floors are usually just some form of plastic with wood grain printed on it. Did you mean engineered hardwood? (Usually about a 1/8th hardwood layer with cross layered plywood under it.)?

Engineered flooring is great if you have a lot of variation in humidity or expect that the subfloor will get a bit wet at times.

In rebuilding the house we're in, I experimented with engineered hickory but ended up taking out the sample section and replacing everything on the main floor with 3/4 inch hickory from Columbia hardwoods. That was expensive because I needed a lot of it - the loft, however, is only about 300 sq ft so I watched kijiji (like craigslist) until the right bargain came along: 400 sq ft of natural birch at about $1.00/sq ft. If your room is oinly 64 sq ft, I'd suggest trying that: watch CL until the right stuff washes up at the right price..

[David Kuzdrall]

Check out "Really cheap floors" or something close to that. Its a clearing house for Shaw and can have some really cheap flooring.

Larry

How do these folks compare with lumber liquidators? Are there any other players in this category of factory seconds and / or inexpensive flooring?