Bad laminate

rubbish laminate
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I floored most of the flat using Ikea’s fine Balk real wood floor, which looks great and was easy to lay (although it has a slight problem with widening gaps between the planks in busy areas).

In the kitchen, I used some kitchen laminate from B&Q that looks like tiles and again was easy to lay and looks great.

In the house we needed to put in a new floor in Marcel’s room (due to a mixture of brown and pink carpets), and he liked Ikea’s brown Tundra which is very cheap but which Phyllis claims to have had good results with in the past.

It was a complete disaster, however. The planks just didn’t want to click together as they should. I know the floor wasn’t as even as it should have been, but this was horrendous! And while trying to make them click, they would get all chipped, so the whole floor looks like a dog’s dinner now. Fortunately Marcel doesn’t seem to mind, though.

I just wish I knew whether a more expensive laminate would have been less sensitive to the unevenness of the floor.