Botched laminate flooring - any fitters/experts?

ruth75

My parents very kindly offered to pay for me to have some laminate flooring put in my downstairs. I got a few quotes, and chose a mid priced quote of £350 for 32m2. The bloke runs his own firm and came recommended.

Anyway, I feel he has done a poor job. The work he did on the first day is fine on the whole, however the work he did on the second day is awful in my opinion. Despite the base floor being pretty much flat concrete, the hall floor is much higher than the lounge area, he has separated them with a long threshold strip, when he said he would run it through, the threshold strip is not fixed down and moves about/lifts up, virtually all of the beading has either come off, is coming off or is badly fixed and doesn't meet the wall properly with large blobs of visible glue and in one corner of the lunge the whole floor visibly moves when stepped on and you can already see two of the boards sort of folding at the join, where one is higher than the other.

Can anyone answer me the following questions -

1. When fitting a threshold strip (particularly one which is almost 2 metres long) should it be fixed to the base floor somehow, or left unfixed?

2. When I lifted the old floor some cables were concealed underneath the beading, in the gap between floor and wall, however he has run the cables under the actual floor, thus causing the boards to lift up at the edges as they are being raised by the cables. How should this be done correctly?

He is meant to be coming back to address my issues on Thursday (I'm dubious as to whether he will show up as he has already cancelled once) so I want to know what is the correct way this should have been done.

TIA

phill99

The threshold strip comes as a 2 piece unit. One piece (the 'carrier') should be secured to the floor and the cover strip (the bit you actually see) snaps into the carrier. Yt sounds like the carrier is loose, or he hasn't used one.

Thin cables can be put into the expansion gap, but you need to be wary that if they are too thick they could effectively block up the expansion gap which may cause the floor to buckle. However, Putting cables under the floor is a no no as the floor will be uneven.

ruth75

Thank you. There is a 'carrier' which is just lying loose, not fixed in any way. But the top part isn't even fixed to this, and doesn't seem to fix in anyway, the snaps don't appear to fit on to it. Very puzzling.

As for the cables, I thought as much.

Thank you

mr_vampy

Phil99 beat me to it. Depending on the job, sometimes I will use both the cover strip and base plate which is fixed to the sub floor. Other times I will use the cover strip only and secure with a strong and thick double sided tape to the laminate.

What type of cable is underneath the flooring? Depending on how thin it is and the length, I normally fit it in the expansion gap which is then covered by the beading trim. If its a thick cable and long enough, I will tell the customer if they wanted fitting on to the skirting board, etc. Would never put that underneath the floor as it would make it uneven.

With fixing the beading, i use a nail gun which fires 15mm nails to secure it.

ruth75

Thank you. The cable is quite thick I guess, it is the cable for the virgin media service, I'd say it's about 6-7mm diameter. I did ask if he could hide it and he said it wasn't a problem, if he had explained to me why he couldn't I'd have been happy to have it fixed to the skirting. Although given that he has put it under the floor maybe he didn't know the reason why he shouldn't have done it.

It just seems like he didn't leave enough time for himself, not sure why as he got loads done on the first day and had very little left to do in comparison, and the work he did on day 1 is all ok, except two small bits of trim which came off. The more I look at it, the worse it seems.