Usually laminate flooring instructions will advise you to start laying your laminate along a straight wall, but what if you don’t have the luxury of a straight start wall? What do you do then? Scroll on and call in the pros or hang on, hold on and increase your awareness and sense of accomplishment?
If you choose the latter, writing the first row is pretty simple. You’ll need a protractor — remember those fun hinged things you used in math class a long time ago? And you will need a jigsaw to cut the laminate to the shape of the starting wall.
Start by assembling the laminate row end-to-end and align it against the crooked starting wall. Make sure the tongue side of the row length faces the wall and allows enough space for expansion space, which should be ¼ “to ½”. (You can leave about an eighth of an inch for the tongue.)
Expansion space is the space you will need between the laminate and the wall on all sides to allow for the natural expansion and contraction of the floating floor due to changes in temperature and humidity throughout the year. If you don’t leave adequate space, your finished floor will buckle.
In short, you’ve laid out your front row and lined it up against the starting wall with enough room for expansion space. Now take your protractor and set the width at the widest point from the wall to the straight row of laminate. Run the protractor along the wall, marking the laminate row on the tongue side with the attached pencil. The pencil marks indicate how you will cut the laminate pieces to match the wall.
Disassemble the row of laminate and cut each piece with a jigsaw following the pencil marks on the side of the tongue. Make sure to reassemble the row in the same order and position it, again leaving room for expansion space. Your starting row now matches the crooked starting wall, while the side of the slot presents a straight line from which to lay the rest of the floor.
