I need advice on what glue to buy for a laminate 'click-together' flooring.

The situation is that I have a long hallway that has a room at one end with a subfloor of cement and tile the rest of the house has a wood floor. Each spring and fall, when the weather changes, the house expands or contracts causing the rows that overlap the tile floor to gap between 2 panels on each row in the center area of the hallway.

I have Parador laminate which looks to me to be like Pergo.

Thanks a lot,

Bob

Good chance if you glue that area, your going to have the same problem somewhere else. It's gotta go somewhere. I know people don't like t-mouldings, especially in a hall. But it may be what's needed to solve the problem of the movement busting seams apart.

Not only would I have to put t-moulding in the Hall but I would have to put it between the kitchen and the living room where I took out a wall to combine the two rooms and that is actually a zig zag because that wall had built in cabinets that one side was on the cement floor and the other on the wood floor. There isn't any problem between the cement floor and the living room wood floor, which uses the side tongue and groove, but lengthwise down the hall is the problem. Do you think that maybe because they don't have a locking mechanism (or much of one) on the tongue end it seperates there?

No, a moulding to seperate the two floor types would not be anywhere even near practical. I'll glue the whole thing if I have to. Well I'm desperate enough to try it. But finding the right glue has been a big problem for me as the manufactorer has no direct service to the customer and my DIY retailer is a Home Depot type of store in Switzerland (where I live). So I guess I will have to go back with pictures and insist on contacting the manufactorer.

Thanks for the help.

Bob

Bob, Yes the interlocking system on the majority of the click floaters does not lock as strong at the end joints as the length joints.

If you decide to proceed with gluing.......

http://www.titebond.com/ProductLineTB.a ... odline=144

Like Howard saids, it may just keep working back errr forward and eventually you might be gluing the whole floor together. However thats the route I'd take first. It may stop after awhile.

Can you kick the rows back together with your foot and relock them?

After glueing and wiping off any adhesive ooze tape the end joints with blue tape for 24 hours.

Howard,
Perfect... that's just the glue I need.

Stephen,
Oh Yeah, thanks for the tool tip. You guys really know your stuff.

Thanks again,

Bob

You can find Titebond II in the paint section at Lowe's or HD.

The rule for several laminate manufacturers since going to click is, any opening less than 4 feet wide, gets a "T" molding. When it was all glue together, it was a much stronger connection.
Anytime you go longer than 30 feet in a room into hallway type run, it can get some serious swell and shrink in that distance.

This is just the end joints, right?

Right, it's just end joints and just one joint per row and in the middle of the hall. The hall is about 30 feet from wall to wall because it runs from a bedroom in one end to a kitchen at the other end.

Do you think I should glue the hall side joints as well?

It's a 1937 house in Switzerland. I took out the wall separating the kitchen from the living room and a wall to the hall for an open arcetecture. Then I had to level these three rooms which I did by laying down particle board (18mm) on the wood floor to support and raise it to the kitchen tile. I leveled the tile and some of the hall with leveling cement. And I removed the door footer jams so that the flat could have one continuous floor. A sheet of plastic was next, then 5mm pad, and the laminate.

Here are photo links to the situation;

http://i1131.photobucket.com/albums/m55 ... loor3a.jpg
http://i1131.photobucket.com/albums/m55 ... loor1a.jpg

Thanks again for your help I was really frustrated because info here in Switzerland is real hard to come by and now I see that you pros are dealing with this kind of thing all the time.

Bob

Bob, Your not going to want to hear this, ( cause I know you love t-mouldings), but.... If those 2 doorways had t-mouldings, (as per manufacturer), I'd be willing to bet you would have allowed the necessary movement in the hall,( seperated from the different amount of movement in larger rooms), and the seams wouldn't be seperating.
IMO you may have created a weak pressure point,( which eventually has to give), due to additional, and seperate volumes of movement,( as you stated happens at certain times of the year). I think the different types of substrates at that location may be a coincidence. It is a floating floor

Yeah that's a little tough but if I can keep the kitchen/living room and hallway as one floor then it will serve the design of the open architecture that I hoped to achieve by removing the walls.

Do I have any other options?

Would a glued down wood floor go over both the cement/tile and particle board?

But before I go adding moldings to the doorways I think I will try to glue and see what happens. When I first put the floor in about 8 months ago the hallway gaped as indicated and I adjusted the panels and it held for 6 months until the season changed to winter. I guess it can't hurt to try other then some extra work.

Thanks again

LOL, I knew you wouldn't be thrilled with that, but I had to throw it out there.

Absolutely, definitely worth a shot, cross my fingers it does the trick. Actually it's tough to tell in the picture, but it may just be the one doorway that's under 4', then you would still have "flow through". Regardless, hope gluing works, worst case in 6 months glue some more ( Just giving you a hard time You gotta promise to let me know in 6 months

O.k.,Now I do see in the 2nd picture, there's more than the 1 doorway under 4'.


I'm having a hard time figuring out how your able to push those hall end joints back together. Are you removing base and moving a whole room with a crow bar or something ?

Nice looking job except for the shoe or quarter round. I would have pulled the base and did you say you undercut the door casings? Looks like trim around them.

I never would have put transition strips in that house either, even if all the doorways were less than 4 ft or even 1 meter. I hate those transition strips. I only put them in when working for some designer/s who specs them.



Not really unless you put in a new underlayment over top with lots of labor involved.

Howard,

Yes I'm removing the trim and using a crowbar with blocks on the opposite expansion gap. And I put blocks, weights and my wife on the side rows I don't want to move. Yankee ingenuity you know.

Actually I have two flats I am remodeling (each with a kitchen, bath) so the first picture is the finished floor 1 with the problem and the second is the floor that I'm presently laying down the laminate in.

The 1st floor flat has 2 doors on the left with laminated rooms.

The 2nd floor flat has the same situation (that's why they look so much the same) but also I took the front door off this flat, it is on the right across from the vacuum cleaner, to combine the stairway to the 3rd floor flat (creating a maisonette). So there is a small laminated area there also. The stairway is a beautiful old wooden spiral stairway that needs renovating but will look just great inside the house and I'll open up the wall with a big hole someday to see it better. This doorway is about 5 feet wide now.

But not to fear, the 3rd floor is a simple job with separate rooms. LOL

What a challenge this house has been as we are doing almost everything ourselves including pulling new wire (there's a cellar too), putting in a new kitchen and bath from scratch and renovating a kitchen and bath. Leveling the floors was hell (mostly because I don't know what I'm doing and no one else around here knows either). Pulling out walls and building walls that were straight enough for the new kitchen and bathroom, they never had a modern build before. New plumbing for them also. The kitchen walls are cement and I needed them to look like the living room wood walls so they were texturized. Lots of cement work and tileing. The beams are actually covers we made over steel IBeams that a carpenter put in for me. As are the posts.

I will most definitely keep you informed of the results.
And thanks for the finger crossing, I can use it.

Bob

Stephen,

Yeah that's what I thought, I can't raise the floor anymore because a double door to a balcony is to the left through the living room and it wouldn't open and I would have to put in a whole new door which the locals won't let me do because of fire code restrictions and forcing me to do a bunch of other unnecessary and ugly work to satisfy it. Catch 22

I undercut the door frames and left the baseboards uncut with the original trim refinished. You can't see it from the pictures but there are wood accents throughout the house like the window pane ledges (I don't know what to call them) and the kitchen and the balcony and the wood spiral staircase which is a heavy gauge hardwood. It makes a little more sense when these things are seen. Pulling the baseboards seemed like a lot of work and risk that I would have to invest in new ones or damage the pressboard walls.

The thing about the transition strips is that I worked pretty hard to remove the door jam footers which all the old houses around here have and everyone hates because you are always tripping on them. In hindsight I would have left them in place and just planed them down to floor height. This would have been the best thing to do with the 2 side doors to the left and I could even have done it for the door in the foreground but I really need to preserve the open look of the kitchen/living room/hall/stairway.

Thanks for your interest, I wish I would have spoken with you earlier.

Bob

Bob, not familiar with door jamb footers, got a close-up pic? I am a westener. Got a few old Victorian houses out here but most likely not like back there at all.