[StirCrazy]

ok, I have done pretty much the 1/2 the whole house in it now, and did a lot of reading on it.

the thickness donesn't matter so much, 8mm, 10mm, 12mm there all good but what does matter is you buy a good quality in that size. there are two types, DLP (direct pressure lamanate), and HPL (High pressure lamanate) you want HPL if you can find it it is more stable and stronger, but more expensive. If all you can find is DLP then get 12mm or thicker which is also more expensive. My theory is the 0.99 lamanates are just there to get you into the store so you can see how ugly they actualy are. I have some of that buck/foot stuff in my dinning room that I have to remove and put differ stuff down. Previous owners installed it. it is already getting buckels at the joints, but we are going to do the whole upstairs in laminate so we are just trying to decide which one to go with upstairs, befor I start that. besides, I have to many other renos going on right now to worry about that haha

also what are you installing it on? If over cement, it is different than over wooden subfloor.

wooden subfloor, clean, amke sure you remove any staples/nails that are left over from carpet and any screws or nails that are holding the subfloor down are sunk properly, put your underlay down and install the lamanate. On cement you need to do some extra work. first you need a underlay then the padding. my basement cost me 500.00 to get the floor ground level (about 600 sqft). my laminate was 2.30/sqft on sale reg 2.89 (which is the cheepest you are going to get a good lamanate for, unless there is one heck of a sale) then you have to put your underlay. I recomend getting a good one. I got floor muffler for about 0.79/sqft and because I was in a basement below grade I needed a thermalbreak / moisture control layer which was a roll of dimpled ABS. all seams on the ABS and underlay were tuck taped and then the floor installed ontop of that.

that 600 sqft was split into two rooms, a big bedroom and the family room. the bedroom took about 6 hours to do as the stuf we used required the ends of the starter row to be glued togeather then wait an hour and the cutting around the closet took a bit. the family room which is twice the size took me about 4 hours and I had to do some fancy cutting around the fireplace. there are good instructions with the products and make sure you follow them.

remember you cannot install it under a fish tank, as it is a floating floor and only made for lighter furnature loads. the big problem is it will crack the locking joints if the weight is to much, so if you are going to put a big fishtank over it you want to buy the types with the aluminum locking joints and now were talking big bucks. Its not a good idea around the tank anyways as water that isn't wiped up right away can eventualy swell the material and buckel your floor. I did the bar/tank area in slate tiles, and the rest in lamanate.

for tools, you will need a saw for laminate, a miter saw with a lamanate blade works good, I also got a blade for my table saw as I had to do some long rips also. you will need a puller thing for lamanate flooring. Don't buy an instalation kit they are a rip off and there is only one tool in them you need (which is the puller thing that you can buy on its own.

so your wanting to go in a 1.00 sqft is going to be hard unless you gfet your laminate for about 0.65/sqft then your underlay (a cheep one) for about 0.35/sqft and don't have to buy any tools. this will give you a floor that you are going to have to pull up and replace in about a year (as my brother is finding out now) a more realistic number would be about 3.00-3.50/sqft upstairs, or 3.50-4.50 for a downstairs on cement.

Steve