Introduction: Reused Click Flooring - Sewing Room Reno

About: YuKonstruct is a non-profit society which provides an enthusiastic community of makers and entrepreneurs affordable access to space, equipment and knowledge. This community serves to embrace the individual and…

We recently renovated the sewing room in our makerspace.

YuKonstruct's sewing room doesn't always get the attention it deserves, so we wanted to make the room inviting and better suited for working with textiles.

Before our renovations, the room had wall-to-wall carpet. Dropped needles and pins would get lost in the carpet, causing a potential risk, especially to our littlest makers. Vacuuming bits of thread was also wreaking havoc on our vacuum cleaners, frequently tying up the power heads.

This instructable covers how we replaced the carpet with used laminate click flooring, donated by one of our members.

YuKonstruct is the first makerspace in Canada's north. Our mission is to provide access to shared space, quality tools, available expertise, and a collaborative environment to help makers build anything!

Step 1: Rip Out the Carpet!

The first step was to remove the existing carpet. Tearing out carpet can be tricky if there is a lot of glue used.

Luckily we were able to pull up the carpet without too much trouble. We removed all the baseboards and then pulled up the carpet in sections.

Tips: Have lots of sharp utility knives available (there are even carpet cutting blades available) and cut small strips of carpet if it's difficult.

Step 2: Prep Your Floor

Patch any holes or gaps in the floor.

We removed a tiny closet as part of our renovations, so we had to fill in a small section of the floor with scrap wood so it would be level with the rest of the room.

Add the foam under pad and connect the gaps using tape.

Since our donated flooring had been previously installed in someone's home, assembling the layer of foam under pad was a bit like putting together a puzzle.

Step 3: Get Floor Boards Ready

The click flooring will have a notch and groove on either side of the floor boards.

Since we were using reused flooring, we sorted the boards into 3 piles:

  • full boards
  • boards that had been cut short but still had 2 good sides
  • boards with notches cut out or edges cut

The full boards are obviously the easiest to work with, but if you are strategic in the placement of your pieces you can make use of a lot of the scrap bits on the edges of your room.

Step 4: Lay Out the Floor Boards

We chose to start in the corner of a relatively straight wall, farthest from the main door into the room.

It is important to stagger the joints between the floor boards. Alternate the sizes of the floor boards along the wall when you start each new row so the connections between the boards will be space out.

Align the floor boards so that the tongue and groove match up.

Step 5: Click in Your Floor Boards

Start clicking your floor boards together. Do one line or strip at a time going down the room. The final floor board at the other end of the room will need to be measured and cut to fit.

Use a soft mallet to help tap the floor boards together. There should be no gap between the boards and you should hear a very clear "click" when they fit nicely together.

Tip: tilting the tongue down towards the groove and then pushing the floor board down sometimes helps it click into place nicely. If they are fussy, try adding the next floorboard down and connecting two boards at once.

Once the floor is all installed, put the baseboards back up and nail down a transition strip where the new laminate floor meets the old carpet in the next room.

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