DIY Project: Laminate floors in a bathroom

Hi fellow Steemians / DIY enthusiasts,

This past weekends weather was beautiful here in the Boston area. One of the things I enjoy doing in this type of weather is to do some work around the house; have the windows open, the door to the deck open and letting some great air circulation. The latest project I was working on was replacing the flooring in our bathrooms. This will be a 2 part series because well I'm not finished with it yet!
This was a fun project to do, I enjoy doing work with my hands around the house, on the cars and in the garden. It's one of my stress relieving hobbies.

Tools Needed
First things first, you need to have the right tools for the job!

The tools I used are from left to right: metal cutters, razor knife, needle-nose pliers, hammer, prybar and a tape measure.

You also need a good square and pencil. Those are vital for accurate measurements!

One of the important things to remember is safety when you are working with any tools. A good pair of ear muffs and safety glasses are one of the most important things to own.

A good circular saw and jig saw are one of the best tips for successfully finishing laminate floors.

One of these oscillating tools are vital to have as well. As you can see, it has a blade pointing forward which allows you to cut straight ahead. This will be displayed when I post the picture of the trim I cut.

Getting Started

The flooring we chose for the bathroom is a semi water resistant laminate wood floor. These floors are great because they are durable, well priced and they are fairly easy to install. The style we used was tongue and groove locking technology. You just need to lock the two together at an angle and place it down. Tight spaces is different but I will go over that in the next post.

One of the first things to do is make sure that you are taking off the trim from the wall or using the oscillating tool to cut the trim. I did both.

I took the trim off the lower part of the wall. You do this because the floors need space to "breathe" which is they expand and contract depending on the weather, temperature and humidity. The trim also hides imperfections in cutting and gives you more room to align the boards. When you install trim and are finished with the job you typically caulk it which serves two purposes: it seals it to the wall to prevent moisture from getting behind the boards and it also helps secure it to the wall so it won't move in addition to nails. To remove this caulking so you can pull the board off you need to use the razor knife and make cuts along the top of the trim board and when you are done with that do the bottom along the old floor. Once you do this you slide the pry bar behind the trim gently if you want to re-use the board like I do, or if you are replacing it altogether just go crazy and rip it off!

We also used the oscillating tool to cut the bottom trims off the door frame, the trim near the door and the frame around the washer/dryer. This allows for the new floor to slide under the trim nicely. To properly measure how high you need to cut, place one of the boards you are going to use right up to the trim and mark the top of it with a pencil. This gives you the minimum height necessary for the board to slide under smoothly.

Putting down the floor and measuring properly

Once you have the trim and beginning parts completed it's time to lay some of the floor boards. It's important to do two things during this process: not have them all be the same length, this adds strength to the floor when they are staggered, and insulate the floor with the proper material. I choose a high quality thin insulation, it was more expensive but it's better rated for moisture protection which is important in a bathroom. It also suppresses sound quite well which is a kind thing to do for people living there or neighbors if you live in a condo/apartment.

As you can see from this picture, I staggered the boards so they are not all the same length, tucked it against the wall where the trim will end up residing and used the insulation. With the insulation you do not need to cover every inch, mainly just the high traffic areas. I will not be insulating behind the toilet for obvious reasons.

Once you get some boards laid and are moving along, you will end up encountering a difficult spot that you need to make angled cuts for. In our bathroom this happens a few times; against the vanity cabinet and the washer/dryer. To cut the boards for the vanity cabinet I figured out a pretty easy method this time around. When I did our kitchen we had an angled sink and it was not fun; I tried using this fancy angle finding tool calculated the angle at 184 degrees and tried to cut the board. Needless to say that process was too difficult. What I did this time was measure the distance for the board from the start of the angle cut and to the end as displayed below.

I took the measuring tape to the first edge of the board and measured to the cabinet. I then put the measuring tape to the other edge of the board and measured to the cabinet. These distances give you how you need to cut; put those measurements on the board and you will have the proper angle. Keep in mind that in this situation, you need to measure the board from the beginning of the new one as displayed here.

I measured up the 3 7/8th's distance on the one side, then measured the other 8 or so inches for the end.
Once you make the proper cuts it will look like this:

It rides the length of the cabinet but gives a little bit of space to expand if needed or contract. These small gaps will further be covered up by the floor trim that is specifically designed for these floors which I will show in the next post; you don't install any trim until you are done!

Once I finished those angle cuts I got to the other complicated section: the washer/dryer area. This area I will ultimately need to re-do because the space was tight and I ended up messing up the boards a little bit unfortunately.


The space was incredibly tight to get the boards into so I ended up chipping them trying to get them into place.

Please share your DIY experiences with me! I like to chat with people who've done these and hear their stories.