Laminate floor fitting in Willenhall, Short Heath and New Invention. Subfloors levelled first, expansion gaps done properly, doors trimmed, old floor taken away.
Laminate is easy to buy and easy to fit badly. Much of Willenhall is on solid concrete ground floors from the post-war rebuilding. Those are rarely as flat as they look. A laminate laid onto an uneven slab creaks at every joint within a year.
Upstairs is a different job. The bedrooms in the same houses have timber floors. These are screwed down and levelled before the laminate goes on. A whole-house job in Willenhall is really two sets of preparation. The expansion gap at every wall stays hidden under the beading. Leaving it out is why so many DIY floors lift in the first warm spell.
Self-levelling compound on the solid floors, hardboard or ply on timber. Nothing goes down onto a floor that moves.
A solid Willenhall ground floor needs a DPM under the underlay. Without it the moisture goes into the boards.
Gaps at every wall, hidden under the beading, so it does not buckle in summer.
Carpet, underlay, gripper rods and the skip run are in the price.
Concrete downstairs gets a damp check, levelling and a membrane; timber upstairs gets screwed down and boarded. Each floor is prepared for what it actually is.
Photos of each room and one of any bare concrete you can see. Tell us how old the house is. Say whether the bedrooms upstairs are included. That tells us the preparation we need to plan.
It changes the preparation. A solid Willenhall ground floor needs checking for level and needs a damp-proof membrane under the underlay. Laminate laid straight onto bare concrete draws moisture and swells at the joints.
Almost always, by a few millimetres. It is part of the job, not an extra, and we take them off and cut them properly.
A bedroom is a day including preparation. If a concrete floor needs levelling compound we tell you first, because it has to dry before anything goes on it.
On a concrete ground floor, yes. Older Willenhall slabs often have no membrane in them at all, and moisture coming up through the concrete swells laminate at the joints. Many underlays have one built in; if not, a separate sheet goes down first.
Yes, and it is often easier. Doing every room together means the thresholds line up and the doors are trimmed once. Downstairs and upstairs need different preparation, so allow a little longer than the floor area suggests.
The area, how much levelling the floor needs, the number of doors to trim and whether a damp membrane is needed. A whole-house job costs less per room than one room at a time. A flat floor is quick.
Send a photo or a quick video of the room on WhatsApp and we'll see if we can quote you over the phone, or fill in the form and it opens your email ready to send.
