Hi! First time posting... My husband and I are planning to replace the old, nasty carpet in our living room, foyer and hallway with laminate flooring. We found a sample that we like at Home Depot (Pergo brand - Bridgeport Red Oak - $1.97/sqft), and all the family jumped on board and gave us HD giftcards for Christmas. In the process, my husband discovered HD's match-price policy, and set out to try to find the same flooring cheaper. Instead, we've found DreamHome Nirvana flooring in French Oak that we like just as much, if not more, at Lumber Liquidators - complete w/ padding attached, and for $1.69/sq ft. My question to you HD employees (and/or ex-employees) is - I understand the Pergo styles you carry are specific to Home Depot only and can't be purchased elsewhere, thereby avoiding that pesky price-match guarantee. While I can't find any in our local store, is there any product similar in quality and price to the pad-attached Nirvana flooring that we found for $1.69/sqft available through Home Depot? Cheapest pad-attached flooring I can find so far at HD is $3/sqft. Since majority of our funds are tied up in HD giftcards, we seem to be stuck with them... Does anybody have any suggestions for decent quality and affordability? Thanks!

 

The areas we're replacing the flooring in are currently carpeted, and have stained baseboards currently in place (but no quarter-round). I've been reading about needing to put spacers next to the wall while installing the laminate flooring, which to me means we'll need to remove the baseboards first, then reinstall them w/ quarter-round after the floor is installed. My husband says we won't have to take off the baseboards because there is no quarter-round. Anybody care to settle the bet??

The floor will be going directly on to the concrete slab (no basement, no crawlspace). If we do find flooring w/ padding pre-attached, is there anything else we need to lay down first? (Plastic, etc?) I just want the perfect product to appear before my eyes, then suddenly install itself beautifully on my floor. What aisle was that magic wand on???

 

You will need to lay down a 6mil plastic first, this is your vapor barrier. Google how to do it. Some say overlap the sheets, some say just but them up to each other and tape. Its not expensive, btw.

 

If you remove the baseboards you won't need 1/4 round. After installing the laminate, you cover the gap by reinstalling the baseboards.

If you want to add 1/4 round, there is no need to remove the baseboards, you place the spacers against the baseboards and cover the gap with the 1/4 round. But be sure to nail the 1/4 round into the baseboards and not the flooring.

So, what does the winner of the bet win??

 

use shoe molding for the trim not quarter round

 

why use shoe over quarter? Just because its smaller?

 

We did it! We decided to go with our first choice, and got the first Pergo that we liked from Home Depot. We bought an upgraded 3-in-1 underlayment that has the moisture barrier, padding and noise cushion. It has a self-adhesive strip with an 8" overlay instead of having to tape the rows together, but getting (and keeping) those seams straight while getting the adhesive down was a pain in the butt. First 2 rows were definitely a learning curve, middle of the room flew by, last row (which all had to be shaved) almost caused me to snatch my head bald. But all in all, I'm thrilled w/ the results. We left the baseboards on and used the spacers with the intention of using quarter round. We decided to go with quarter-round instead of shoe moulding because we're flooring rookies - we need a wider margin of error to cover.

We still have the hallway and foyer to go. Hallway carpet is all out, underlay is down, we'll be putting the flooring in tonight. But the foyer is another story... It's currently a parkay floor (I'm sure that's misspelled - I mean the wood, not the butter spread). It's apparently glued down, and we can't get it to come up easily. My fear is if we go to chiseling all over it we'll get the slab all chipped up and uneven, sabotaging our laminate before we ever get it down. Is there a trick to getting that flooring up??? Some chemical that melts the glue bond? I'm open to any suggestions... Thanks!!!

 

First of all good job, as you can see its not hard to do, just a lot of hard work. Having a table saw and a jig saw make the job easier, not sure if you had those, but ripping down the last row is much easier with the table saw.

As far as removing old glue, you might want to try a heat gun, they are cheap and should help loosen the old glue. I have not done this myself, but seems like it would work.