Laminate Flooring

I recently installed a marvelous laminate floor in the kitchen and laundry room here at ranchero indebto. (And I completed the task all by my D-I-Y lonesome self.) Now you might be wondering why I'm babbling about laminate floors here in Lockergnome. Here's the deal ... I used all of my geek might (and my trusty old computer and software) to make the tricky job of installing the laminate flooring easier. Hard to believe? Read on ...

We decided on laminate flooring as the best way to handle the abuse from the kids and critters. While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, laminate flooring is high-tech, super-tough stuff. But it's not the always the easiest thing for the do-it-yourselfer to install. That's where the power of the PC comes into play.

Laying out the laminate flooring tiles is a crucial task. You want to be sure of the pattern (as much as possible) before the table saw is fired up and a single tile is cut. This allows you to minimize the number of cuts while placing the seams in the best possible places.

It all started with some careful measurements. While I would have loved to have one of those nifty laser radar sonar measuring gadgets, I made do with a trusty old tape measure. I scribbled down all of the numbers onto a piece of scratch paper before I found my way to the computer.

So what program did I use to make my laminate flooring job go easier?

Adobe Illustrator!

Over the years, I've found that vector drawing programs can be a wonderful aid for D-I-Y visualizations. I took all of the measurements from the kitchen and laundry room and drew a simple diagram. (While I could have easily used Freehand or Corel, for the task, I happened to have AI handy.) Once I had the floor plan to scale, I created a single vector laminate tile.

Then I duplicated the tile and used guidelines to layout the tile pattern to best fit the rooms. Once the full tiles were laid out on screen, I created the cut tiles. When it was all done, I tallied up the number of tiles and added 15% for wastage to come up with the total number of tiles I needed to place my laminate flooring order.

Cutting and gluing the tiles took quite a bit of work, but all-in-all, the laminate flooring installation went pretty well. Having a nice crisp vector road map to work from made a big difference. Best of all, I didn't end up short on tiles. And I didn't end up over by three cases, either.

I saved at least a thousand bucks, even after springing for a new mini-table saw. I'll admit it ... I like doing stuff like this around the house for three reasons (in no particular order): I get to save a few bucks, I get the satisfaction out of doing it myself, and (okay, maybe this is the most important) I get to justify those new power tools to my ever-appreciative spouse.