Cork Plank Laminate Flooring Installation – Quercus Suber

A month ago my sister was helping me pick cabinet veneer. A couple weeks ago she was helping me to pick flooring. More recently; countertop color, sink colors, faucet colors, etc… She has been a huge help and huge encouragement!  Thanks Sis!!  All of this is because I have no ability to match colors and/or “see” a design that all works together. Sure – after it is all together I can see that it looks great. Show me individual pieces and ask me if they match… duhhhh… I dunno.

Back to picking out flooring…. We spend a bunch of time at the home improvement place looking at ALL the flooring options – cabinet sample in hand.

In the end we could not find a woodgrain laminate flooring that matched the cabinets. However; we did find a cork plank flooring that looked great! It is “Heritage Mill Macadamia Cork” and is a floating flooring using a glueless locking system. It is made from the wood/cork species “Quercus Suber”, in case you were curious. 🙂

Fantastic – I’ll take it!

… it must be ordered… Doh!!

So, I ordered and waited.

I didn’t have to wait very long. 150 square feet of it showed up and I went to work.

I VERY quickly learned that installing flooring is a great hobby for people that enjoy a puzzle – and a challenge! It took a few false starts – thankfully this flooring is easy to take apart.  I finally got moving and then progress was hard to slow. When the planks are in the open, they go together easily with a few taps. However; when under cabinet/appliance “overhangs” or in tight spots – they are a bugger! One thing that did slow me down was not having a tool to “pull” the plank into position when the side that needed tap was not accessible. I knew they made such a tool so I planned a trip back to the home improvement store.

Lying in bed that night, it donned on my how easily I could make that tool myself – and save an hours’ worth of driving. Bright and early the next morning I put my ‘tool design and construction’ skills to work and in short order had this handy-dandy “Finley Laminate Flooring Installer, Can Opener, and Apocalypse Survival Tool” ready for operation.

Nice, eh!??!

I have a relative in the tool manufacturing business – I may see if they are interested in my design!!  Imagine the royalties!$!$!

My handy-dandy “Finley Laminate Flooring Installer, Can Opener, and Apocalypse Survival Tool” did the trick and the job was quickly completed!

A tiny annoyance occurred with the last few planks to put into place. With all four edges of the plank being a sort of locking tongue-in-groove type system, the part of a plank left over after trimming off the end would be wasted as it is missing the tongue-in-groove required to fit into the adjoining piece. I could have none of that – I’m too cheap to waste that much material. The interlocking system keeps all the planks together and prevents the seams from showing. So, to avoid waste and not end up with visible seams, I trimmed a bit off the bottom of the previously cut plank so that it would lay on the tongue portion of the adjoining plank. These few planks are not locked in place like the others but at least there is a bit of support so it doesn’t move as independently as it might otherwise. The places that I did this are off to the side in an area that won’t see much traffic so I think they will work and remain unnoticed.

I then sat back and enjoyed the new view! I love the look and feel of the new flooring! Everyone that has seen it seems to like it as well – or they are being nice. Either way, the comments have all been positive!

Missy was glowing with pride at the fine look of her new flooring!!

Side note: One of my goals was to have an electrically warmed floor. While shopping for a floor, I ordered a 100 square foot warming kit that looked like it would work. However; once I received it, there were warnings about installing it only in a layer of thin-set type material (like under tile).  The warm floor idea was abandoned as that was a lot more work than I had planned. I know my little feet’s will complain in about six months when it is cold outside.  I know… we must all deal with hardship at some point…

I’m keeping my eyes open for a system that can be installed under a floating floor. Now that all the cork planks are trimmed to size, I think it would be an easy task to pull them up, install a warming system, and lay the floor back down.  It appears that the ThermoFilm and ThermoFloor products are possibilities.