Q: I am planning out material needs for a flooring project. I am laying a laminate floor (floating) on the 2nd floor of my house, with a wood sub-floor. I have 3 bedrooms (range in size from 150 to 200 sq ft), a bathroom, and a hallway. All rooms have entry from the hallway. What is recommended for transitioning from bedrooms to hallway? Do I have to use a transition molding, or can I just lay the floor right through the doorways? How about from the bathroom to hallway? My last question is on installing the flooring on my stairs. Each step has a “lip” extending out, should I cut that so each step is nice and square?
I really appreciate your feedback.
Thanks,
Basel
A: For your project, since the entire area is connected to the hallway you can just run the floor directly into the room. Make sure you leave a proper expansion gap along all of the walls. Installing like this will take a bit of extra time, but once complete it looks great. If your decide to use transitions you will want to use t-molds as they are built to cover a transition from surfaces of similar height.
On your stairs you’re going to want to cut the lips/nosing off of your stairs before installing laminate over them. This will allow for your stair nose (bull nose) to fit snugly onto the tread area of the stair.
Since this installation will be in the second level of your house, I highly encourage you to use a good sound suppressing underlayment. My staple underlayment for any floating application is cork and the general rule is the thicker the better. A 6mm cork will make your install gold in this case by providing both comfort under foot and great sound suppression.
