Get 'er down...

Wednesday evening I started on the master bedroom laminate after I finished up connecting the bathroom ventilation fan duct.  The first decision I had to make was which direction to lay the laminate.  There were two conflicting trains of thought about this.  One train says lay the laminate in the longest direction of the room; the other, parallel to the direction the light comes into a room.

I had gone online to find the manufacturer's instructions for this particular laminate and they said to lay the laminate parallel with the light coming into the room.  I still mulled it over until I remembered one of the houses we looked at when we were home shopping. The house had laminate laid the longest direction across two rooms but perpendicular to the light coming into the rooms.  I remember looking at it and the glare of the light was just ugly.

So I decided to go parallel to the light.

This meant I needed to do a dry run of laminate across the room to determine how much of a gap would be left on the far wall... about 18 sheets as opposed to 9 sheets if I were to lay the direction.  Once the gap was there, you measured the gap, subtracted the expansion space for both sides (between 1/2 and 1 inch) and then divided by two.  This result was how wide the first course of laminate should be.

30 minutes later I found out that the length of the room was exactly equal to the 18 or 19 sheets needed to cover it.  But that didn't mean I didn't have to rip the first course.  The tongue of the first course of laminate that would go against the wall had to been cut off (ripped lengthwise) so I wasn't saved any saw work.  Each tongue of the laminate that was against the wall had to be cutoff as well.

So, I finally started for real...  I laid the first three courses exactly as the directions called for (and they seemed counter-intuitive to me).  Basically, start with a full length sheet, then start the 2nd course with a 2/3 length piece, and then the 3rd course with a 1/3 piece.  Next the directions called for putting a full length piece on the 2nd and 3rd courses before putting a full length piece on the first course. 

It was difficult but I got that sucker in there.  The instructions then said to repeat the process... Full length on the 2nd course; full length on the 3rd course and then the piece on the first course.  By then I was having to deal with 2 walls and I just couldn't get that piece in there.  If I had been using regular tongue and groove laminate, it might have been possible but I was using an interlocking tongue and groove and it just wasn't possible.

After much frustration, I gave up on following the directions and I did one course at a time.  It started going much better and in about an hour I was able to get about 1/3 of the room done.  Here's how it looks...