How to Install Click Together Flooring Guide

Click-together flooring is an easy way to update the look of your floor. The pre-finished planks just click together with no nails or glue needed. It is an easy, good looking, and durable option that can totally transform the look of any room. How it’s done. Before you start, you’ll want to choose your flooring. There’s a good range available to choose from. We’ve got laminate planks with a number of options here.

They’re scratch, wear, and stain-resistant, so they’ll last you a good while. There’s bamboo planks. This is a great look, a highly sustainable option too– so great for the environment. There is also the timber collection planks. These are engineered from real wood.

Click-together flooring is a floating floor. Floating floors can be installed over wood, vinyl, cork, tile, or concrete– just so long as your floor is nice and level. So the first thing I need to do is work out exactly how much product I need. Now, I know my room is about 5 metres long by 4 metres wide So that’s 20 square metres.

Now also, I’m going to allow 10% for waste. That brings it up to 22 square metres. Now as you can see, all the carpet has already been pulled up. We do have a little bit of glue leftover on the concrete from where the underlay was stuck down. Now, that will come up pretty easy.

I’m just going to use my nice little Linbide paint scraper. Also, I’ve got to remove our carpet tak strip as well. And make sure to remove the little nails that hold the tak strips down as well. If you need to lift any tiles, use a hammer and bolster to chisel them up. And also scrape away any residual tile adhesive.

If it’s a large area, or they’re not coming up easily, you may need to hire something a little bit more heavy duty from the hire shop. Now, there’s a few different ways we can lay our flooring. The first way, we can leave our skirting on and leaving a minimum of 10 to 14 millimetre gap between our flooring and our skirting, that’s allowing for expansion and contraction. Then I could take our colour-matched Scotia– that can go over top, and that will get pinned to the skirting only. Now, the second way is we could hire an undercutter, which is basically a machine that will just cut the bottom of the skirting off, allowing for the flooring to go underneath.

And the third way, which is the way I like, is removing the skirting. Now our skirting is only 10 mil thick, and I need a 10 to 14 mil expansion. So what I’m going to do is also cut a little bit off the bottom of our wall board. That’s going to allow plenty of expansion and contraction. Now there’s a couple of different ways that we can remove our skirting.

Start by using a sharp utility knife to cut any paint, wallpaper, filler, or glue. Now, in this situation, I’m not going to actually keep my skirting I’ve got some nice new ones. These ones are knocked up a little bit. Now, if you do want to save your skirting, what you can do is get one of these nice little flat bars.

This will slip in them behind the back of the skirting and you can use that to break the nails. You could also use a multi-tool and slip it behind the skirtings to cut the nails. Now just while I’m here, I’m just going to clean up as I go. We just don’t see any buildup of paint or any filler that may be there, so when we put our skirting back on we’ve got a nice, flush finish. Now, I’ve got an offcut of my flooring and a little offcut of my underlay.

That’s going to give me the right height to cut our wallboard off. So I’m going to use a multi-tool with a plasterboard cutting blade in there. Now in some situations, like if you see here, I do to have a plasterboard nail that’s going to be right in our way. So what I’m going to do is just cut either side of it, remove that nail, and then after I’ve finished, I’m going to replace it with new wallboard screws. You can use this same technique for undercutting any architraves.

Just switch to a wood blade. I’m just using my little flat bar once again to remove that wallboard. And I’ll use a nail bar to remove the plasterboard nails. So what I’ve got here is about a 12 metre long straight edge. Now, I’m just going to check the floor in all directions just to see if there’s any hollows or any bumps. What we’re checking for is that there’s no hollows more than 3 millimetres over the length of a metre. There is one little place that’s got a slight hollow, just around here. So I’m going to circle that with my pencil. So that indicates exactly where I want to pour my self-leveling compound.

Now, if you were in the situation where you did have a few bumps in your floor, what you could do is use a grinder like this with a concrete grinding blade. So all I’ve got to do now is mix up my self-leveling compound. Follow the instructions on the back of the pack regarding the water ratio. And I’m using a paddle stirrer on a low speed. Now, the great thing about this product is that it is actually called self-leveling compound for a reason.

It will find it’s own level. So you want to just give it a light scrape around with your trowel, and then just let it sit and dry. I’ve given the room a really good clean. I’m just about ready to crack into it. Now before I do that, I’ve measured the exact width of our room from our wallboard to our wallboard.

And the reason I’ve done that because I’m going to work out exactly how many boards I need across the space of that room So what we’ll try to do is adjust the width of that first board so we don’t end up with a small sliver on our last board So we’ve got an overall room width of 42 metres We’re going to divide that by the exact width of our board, 190

Now that gives me 22 boards. So if I go 22 times 190, equals 4180– our room width 4200 minus 4180 leaves me 20 millimetres short of the wall, which means. I’m going to have a 20 millimetre sliver, which is exactly what we don’t want. So what I’m going to do is take it back to 21 boards. So if I go 21 times our 190 width– so that gives me the 3990, which is 210 shy of the wall now. So all I’ve got to do is divide that by 2, which is 105 millimetres.

So what that’s saying is I need to rip my first board down 105 millimetres, and then I can finish laying all my boards, and my last board will be exactly 105 as well. Now in my situation, I’ve already undercut all our wallboard. If you haven’t done that, just make sure you allow your minimum of 10 mil expansion on either side. Now, there’s one other thing I just want to mention too– you want to make sure that your walls are actually parallel with each other, because if they’re slightly out, now is the time to adjust it on that first board. Using my bench saw, I’ll cut the first board to size, cutting the tongue side off so it sits hard up against the wall, leaving the groove side on for the next board to click into.

Now, if you don’t have a bench saw, you could use your circular saw with a guide on it. Now, as we mentioned earlier, I cut this down to 105 millimetres. That’s the face width with the groove side left on So this is my underlay. I’ve already pre-cut it to length.

So all I have to do is roll it out I’ve just put in my first board. Now I’ve just slipped in these little packers in behind it to keep it a few millimetres off the wall. Now just remember, I’ve already undercut my wallboard to allow for that expansion of 10 millimeters. If you haven’t done that, you’re going to have to either double up your wedges so you get to 10 millimeters or actually cut a 10 mil packer to go in there.

Now I’ve also cut our second board square, so that butts against the wall. Now, these two board are going to click in together. And I’m just going to lay two rows at once. That’s going to give me a straight base to work from. Now, when you are cutting your boards for your second or third rows, just make sure that you don’t have any pieces shorter than 300 millimetres.

This will ensure the joins are study. So all we’ve got to do now is click them in together. So we just keep that on a slight angle, slip them in together, and we just need to rotate them down. OK Now, when we put our boards we’re butting them up to each other, what we’ve got to do is drop this board in is little tapping block and gently tap the end of the board so that it grooves into the other one. You may need a hand from someone to apply pressure to the receiving board close to the joint, to help them line up so you don’t damage the joint I’m just about to put down our last board against the wall.

Now, as you can see, it’s about 6 inches too long. So what I’m going to do is turn this board around I’m going to put that end up against our wallboard. And we’re just going to mark where the top of the other board finishes. Now, I’m also just going to allow about 3 millimeters for our packer.

So I’m just going to mark that there. That gets cut off and then we can just slip it in. Then in goes the next board on the second row. And then measure, mark, and cut the next end board in the same way.

And then we’ve got this lovely little tool here, commonly known in the trade as a pull bar. That slips in the end of our board. Then we can hit this edge to connect the two boards. And then just repeat for the next few rows. It’s a good idea as you lay your floor to use boards from different packs as you go to make sure that you vary the wood pattern.

And also, stagger your joints so they don’t all line up I’m just about to lay my flooring up against where my door sill hits the concrete. So I need to rebate out our flooring to accommodate around that I also need to choose how I’m going to finish that edge off, with what sort of a profile. Now, I’ve decided to use this aluminium profile that’s going to sit hard on the floor, up against my door sill and the flooring is going to butt in underneath that.

Now, that’s going to allow plenty of expansion and contraction on that too. We also have the peel-and-stick that you can put up against your door sill. And that will also allow for that expansion and contraction too. But if you want to go with a more wooden look to match your floor, you could go with something like this. Now, we’ve got this wooden profile that finishes hard up against your tile or your carpet.

Or over here, you can overlap onto your flooring and then down onto something like a polished concrete floor. Now, if you are laying more than 8 metres in width of your flooring, you will need to put in a control joint, which is something like this here. You can also get it in an aluminum. OK Now, I’m just going to rebate around our door sill.

So let me show you how to do that I’ve got a full-length piece of the flooring, and I’ve square cut it on the end. Now, I’m just going to push that so it’s about 4 millimetres away from our sill. So I’m just going to mark about 4 millimetres away from the edge of that jam. And now, just got to measure the distance from that board up to the other board.

Now, that’s 18 millimetres, so I’m just going to mark 18 millimetres on there. So I’m going to take this over to the saw and cut that piece out. Now once I bring it back, I can then slide that back down, and this aluminum trim will just slide over there nicely like that. So now, it’s just time to click it in So I’ve got my profile here.

Now, I’ve already pre-cut this to the width of my sill. And I’ve also pre-drilled it I’ve put five holes in ther.e So what I have to do now is fix this straight to my sill. So I’m just going to tuck our underlay straight underneath there.

And I’m just going to cut that off using the aluminum edge as a bit of a straight edge, because we don’t want that going into our profile at all. OK, so now all I’ve got to do is finish laying the floor. Roll out the next piece of underlay, overlap them at the join, remove the adhesive backing, and stick it down. This will ensure a continuous moisture barrier and also help with insulation. So I’m just laying my boards, and I’m just coming up to this corner.

And what I need to do is cut around it. So I’m just going to take our board, click it in like we usually do, and push that up against our wall. And I’m just going to measure the distance from our board down there up to this wall. We’ve got 307 mils. I’m just going to hook that on there, and write 307 there.

This piece gets cut off. And I’m just going to also mark where this comes just about 3 mil away from the wall. So there is my piece all nicely cut out I’m just going to slip that in, take that all the way along, click that in, drop that down, and slip the packer in the end. And for my last few boards, again. I’ll use my pull bar to help slip them into place.

And that’s the floor laid The next step is to replace those wallboard screws every 200 millimeters or so, remove our packers, and then pop our new skirting boards on– or your colour-matched Scotias, if that’s what you have opted for. Now, I’ve already primed that and put our first topcoat on it. So what I want to do is take an offcut of timber, and I’m just going to put that on the top of the skirting board, and then kneel on that. That’s going to force down and make sure that we get a really nice tight join.

Now, I’m using a pin gun. If you don’t have one of these, just go old school hammer and nail. Take a look at our Easy As, “How to Install Moldings” for the best way to put your skirtings back on. Give the boards a quick clean with a microfibre mop. Take care of it properly, and your new floor should last you for years

So make sure you check the instructions for future cleaning and care tips. As you can see, the new floor has completely changed the look of this room.

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