Q: I have a couple of questions, I would like to replace all my flooring (with the exception of the bathrooms) with durable, moisture resistant laminate flooring in maple. I’m confused as to what brand to use. I have vinyl in the kitchen and carpeting in the rest of my condo. The sub floor is ‘soft’ concrete.
My first question is should I remove the vinyl flooring which also has another linoleum tiles under from the kitchen before installing click laminate or can the laminate be placed over the existing floor? When the vinyl flooring was first put in, I was told not to remove the linoleum tiles due to possible exposure to asbestos.
My next question what underlayment should I use? My condo association wants us to have a high noise reduction underlayment so as not to get the hollow sound when walking on the laminate flooring. I have a cat, dog and a child, so noise reduction, durability and moisture resistance is very important.
Thank you.
Jeanette
A: Assuming that all of your current vinyl flooring is in good condition (not coming up or damaged) then you should be fine to install right over the top of it. Now if there are any problems in the current vinyl flooring, you will want to remove it. Typically removing it would then require removing the linoleum as well, but as I said, if the vinyl is in good shape and still well anchored, there is no need to remove it.
Now as far as laminate choices are concerned, there are several very good looking maple patterns out there, but you need to make sure the laminate you are looking at is both abrasion resistant and moisture resistant. Your best options here would be Westhollow’s Eden Maple or Bird’s Eye Maple from the True Natured collection, Costa Rican Maple from the South Pacific collection, Pergo’s Milan Maple from the Select collection or the Nordic Maple from the Select Strip collection, or Quick Step’s Maple Double Plank or Country Maple from the Eligna Collection. All of these are some of the better built laminates out there right now and have several very good patterns for maple flooring.
For underlayment, most HOA and Condo Associations are very stringent about what is necessary for sound suppression with hard surface flooring, especially wood floors. This being said, a majority of the previous condo installations I have worked with required no less than 6mm cork as an underlayment. The sound suppression statistics on 6mm cork combined with its natural density make it a long standing choice for any floating floor. Now if you want to go really over the top, you could use a 12mm cork underlayment or Sound 6 Barrier Acoustical underlayment over the top of a 3mm cork underlayment, but I highly doubt this would be necessary.
In the end your best bet is to put a high grade laminate over 6mm cork for your best flooring option in a condo, both as a matter of durability and suppressing sound.
