Installing Wood Laminate Floors

Including Demo & Choosing a Paint Color
Creating our Nursery- Part 2 of a 3 part series

Have you ever tried to find the perfect blue? Not too childish, not Crayola, subtle enough with enough gray to be "tasteful"? If you read my How to Paint a Front Door blog, you know that there are hundreds of blues to choose from. It's crazy! I'm convinced that blue and green and white are the absolute hardest colors to pick. My strategy was to pick 3 dark and 3 light that stood out to me, slap them up on the wall, stare really hard, point and choose. Or something like that.

We ended up choosing a dark blue (the name of which has escaped me) that Mike refers to as Grover Blue (you know, from Sesame Street). The light blue was the one that had the most gray in it to me.

After we settled on the colors, we removed the base boards. This was intimidating to me because I'd never done it before, but actually super easy. My Momma (Queen DIY) clued me in and told me to break the caulk seal between the wall and board with a utility blade. Duh! Once that was done, we used a 5-in-1 tool to gently pry the boards off. We saved them to use as templates for cutting the new base boards.

Our cat thoroughly enjoyed running around the empty room and "stalking" the carpet.

King of the Carpet- so proud of our first demo project we did together! We actually were able to salvage the carpet and handed it off to my Aunt for use in her home. Talk about recycle!

FYI- I was about 5 months pregnant when we put these floors in. The DR had given me strict instructions to not lift anything/ work hard/ do anything fun, etc. So... enter Queen DIY (Momma) and my [other] Aunt to help Mike install the flooring. Both had done this before and are more knowledgeable than Mike and I are. They got started, making sure to stagger the planks, cut them into different lengths, so on and so forth.


The floor is "floating" so no glue or nails involved (read: easy). We bought the floors at Floor & Decor, a lumber liquidator type place. If I remember, the flooring was around $400 for the entire room, which is maybe 13X11 or so. We bought the top of the line mat/liner stuff (green stuff under floor) to go on top of our existing concrete. The flooring dude said to make sure you get the best padding for under your floor (same goes for carpet installation) to get the longest life from your flooring.

This was Mike's first time using a pneumatic nail/brad gun. Super fun! I'm pretty sure you can rent this set-up from your local Home Depot, but we borrowed it from the same Aunt that helped with the installation.

It took some figuring out to get it working exactly right.

Once we got it right, the base boards went in lickity-split!

Flooring: Check

Base boards: Check

White caulk bead around base boards and wall: Check

So proud of their accomplishment! A little exhausted, too.

Oh ya, a little blood loss happened along the way. Although, Mike was oddly proud of each and every scrape, paper cut, and paint stain. The joys of home ownership!

The painting of the room, including the inside of the closet, took about 2 days. The flooring and base boards took 1 day to install start to finish. Truthfully, it seemed like an impossible project when I, in my limited experience, started planning, but it was surprisingly quick and easy! (says the girl who didn't lift a finger due to child-carrying status)

I'm sure every DIY/ home owner can remember their first major project. This one will always be near and dear to my heart for 2 reasons:

1) our first project as a family and married couple

2) it was in preparation for a very special new member of the family

What project have you done that you will never forget? Why?

Thanks for visiting! Please leave me a comment if you like what you've seen! I heart comments!

~Ann Marie