Laminate flooring expansion gap too wide?
Question:I just installed a laminate floor and somehow one of the planks in the middle of the floor ended up having a wider expansion gap than the rest. It's a little shy of being covered by the baseboard, and I dont' want to have to put quarter round all the way around or take up half of the floor. Any ideas on how to fill in part of the gap?
Answers:
Cut a piece of the laminate to fit in the space still leaving a gap. cut the attaching ends of it and use liquid nails to attach it to the sub floor. Nobody will ever notice.
The thing that nobody tells you when you're installing your own laminate flooring is that the planks are coated in wax to protect them from damage during shipping, and you have to scrape the stuff out of the grooves before you lay it, otherwise you end up with gradually increasing gaps that are VERY difficult to close. My fiance and I found this out the hard way and ended up having to redo three-quarters of the bedroom as a result.
If it's not too big you could run a bead of flexible caulking between new floor and baseboard.
1) you can try filling the gap with a matching color wood putty because it will harden.
2) you can try using a pry bar on one side of the room and see if you can pop it back into place.
Listen to the guys post above me. You have to "rip cut" it on a table saw. Before doing this place the piece against the wall and scribed it to make as accurate a cut as possible on the "wall side" then make a square cut on the side connecting to the existing flooring. You will probably have to cut the tongue off depending what you stopped with.
If the gap is too wide and shoe is not an option have you , Is it possible to shim the baseboard off the wall and use a latex caulk against the splash and the wall.
Take off the baseboard and shim the areas that are short with some cardboard strips. Just place the strips about 1 Inch wide strips of cardboard loose and upright along the bottom edge of wall and put your base board back on be careful where you nail and try to span across areas that are short as not to crush the cardboard and defeat the purpose.Tip sometimes you might have to layer the cardboard in two of three layers to achieve really short areas. Also you can tape them to bottom of the wall if they keep falling over But i find if you just put them in the expansion joint and tilt toward the wall they stay in place enough to get base on.
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