Floating floor for any budget

We have to face this together. Thanksgiving is over. We're about to spend approximately 7 months indoors. Perhaps this is fine with you. Your home may be up to snuff inside, everything tickety-boo. You don't mind staring at the same walls and floors for the duration of winter. You've got no bad 80s tile mocking your sanity, no mouldy basement carpeting.

I do. And in the restless irritation of winter's onset, I'm opting to make it go away.

Covering ugly or worn floors is faster and easier and even cheaper than ever before thanks to 'floating' floor technology. A floating floor is a do-it-yourself project from heaven. As you probably know, few home projects ever come from there.

Glam Lams

Installing a floating laminated floor requires minimal tools (a measuring tape, hammer and saw), it goes quickly, and there's a huge range of aesthetic choices in materials, ranging upwards from about $2 a square foot: laminated cork, bamboo, hardwood or simulated woodgrain, simulated ceramic, even simulated slate or stone. And you can lay your floating floor over almost any surface including historic vinyl, cracked linoleum, plywood subfloor, concrete pad, aging ceramic tile, even old carpeting.

This kind of floor is called 'floating' because it's not nailed, screwed or glued down like traditional flooring. It floats as a unit, expanding and contracting with changes in temperature and humidity. As long as you leave the required 1/2-inch expansion gap at all edges, that floor won't buckle or wow, and it's guaranteed from 10 to 30 years, depending on the type of material you choose.

To Dry For

The business part of laminate flooring (the tongue-and-groove middle layer) is usually composed of high-density fibreboard (HDF), which is basically paper fibres held together with glue. If HDF gets moist, it swells, and that makes your nice, tight snap-together joints want to spread apart. This is why providing a waterproof membrane under the floor is very important, and so is keeping water off the floor surface when you're done. For this reason, most laminate manufacturers strongly recommend against installing their flooring in bathrooms or kitchens. The dire-sounding warnings mean manufacturers don't want you to be disappointed with the performance of their stuff, so they are covering their butts in the nicest way possible: with good advice. Nevertheless, if you're careful, you can stretch the applications of laminate flooring and I know of several cases where laminates are working beautifully in kitchens and bathrooms.

Cork Lift

I went for cork, bigtime. I love cork for these reasons: it dampens sound, it's warm underfoot, it feels nice and springy, it's pretty, it's natural, it's non-toxic (even the six layers of urethane clearcoat are water-based), and cork a renewable, recycled resource made from materials leftover from the wine-cork industry. The only reason not to use cork is footware. If you're into stiletto heels, one heel means 2000 pounds of pressure per square inch under the average-sized woman; that's going to leave a mark.

Here are some tips for installing your floating floor, no matter what material you choose:

• Remove the dang baseboards before you start. When your floor is done, the baseboards can be reinstalled to cover the 1/2-inch expansion gap around the edges of the room.
• If you're applying the flooring over plywood subfloor, make sure to remove or drive in protruding nails or screws.
• Smooth large dents in plywood or concrete with levelling compound (LePage Polyunderlay Plus works great)
• Install 6ml plastic sheeting over the whole floor, overlapping about 2 inches and taping the seams with duct tape. Let the sheeting run about 3" long, so it runs up the walls a bit.
• On top of the plastic sheet, install closed-cell foam or fibre underlayment. Butt the edges together, and seal them with duct tape. TIP: Some underlayments come pre-laminated with a waterproof membrane, allowing you to skip the plastic sheeting step. Starting in spring of 2005, look for underlayment with built-in radiant heat. Oh baby.
• Spend a few bucks on the manufacturer's installation kit - it'll provide you with a custom tapping block, wall spacers to ensure a consistent expansion gap at the edges, and a pull-bar, which you'll need for hammering the planks into position next to walls.
• Starting along the straightest, least-complicated wall, lay boards out in a dry run to get a feel for how they should be cut and staggered so you don't wind up with any butt-ugly seams where the pattern looks obvious, or any dorky little 4-inch sections at one end of a run. Measure across the room to see if you need to rip the first row of boards narrower, so you don't end up installing a really skinny final row.
• When you reach the end of a row, cut the last board to fit, then use the remainder of the board to start the next row.
• Cut boards with a jigsaw or circular saw. Use a straight edge or square to make cuts tidy. TIP: With some laminates (like cork or hardwood veneer) it's better to cut the board with the good side down if you're using a power saw; you'll get less tear-out and splintering.
• When you're working around a door, use a hand saw to remove material at the bottom end of the casing trim (the thickness of the board, plus an extra 1/2-inch for expansion), so the new flooring slides under the trim.
• Replace the baseboard when you're done. If you declined to remove baseboards, trim out the edges with cove moulding or quarter round to cover the unsightly expansion gap. Nail or glue the moulding to the baseboard, not to the floorboards, or you won't have a floating floor, you'll have a buckling floor!

Cork and other laminate flooring is available at home centers in a range of colours and textures.