In a huge variety of floor coverings, parquet occupies a special place. It has a lot of positive qualities: durable and practical, beautiful and environmentally friendly. Parquet floors have been known for several centuries, but until recently their installation in an apartment was very difficult. With the development of technology and the advent of a cheaper, but worthy analogue - glued parquet boards - it became possible to perform this work quite simply, without resorting to the help of professionals. The main thing is to know how to properly lay the parquet board.
Material selection
Before giving step-by-step instructions describing the installation parquet board with your own hands, you should get to know this material better. The main difference between this flooring and the usual parquet is the manufacturing technology, due to which the price of the material becomes more affordable. Such boards are not made of solid wood, but have three layers glued together.
- The upper part is made of the most precious wood species, it is this that gives the product a refined appearance.
- In the middle, made of softwood, there are elements for fixing parquet flooring boards to each other.
- The underside is often plywood. Its main purpose is to reduce the effect of temperature and humidity fluctuations on the material, to give it a certain rigidity. The material of this plywood is most often a Christmas tree.
Parquet planks are classified according to the number of strips of the top layer, the number varies from one to four.
- A floor made of single-strip boards (the most expensive), laid in a herringbone pattern, is almost impossible to distinguish from natural parquet.
- Parquet elements with two or three stripes allow you to create very beautiful ornaments.
- Four-strip dies are produced from various wastes, so their scope is limited. So, professionals do not recommend using them in unheated rooms.
Laying scheme and material calculation
Before laying the parquet board yourself, you need to decide on the laying scheme and calculate the required amount of material.
One-strip elements that imitate parquet can be laid in the style of herringbone, braid, squares, slanting deck, etc. But such beauty requires very significant sacrifices: this requires not only more complex installation, but also leads to an increase in the amount of waste. Most owners prefer a simpler laying pattern, where the elements are arranged in parallel.
How to arrange the floor elements, along or across the room, is decided depending on the visual effect that you want to achieve. It is recommended to arrange the plates so that their direction coincides with the direction of light incidence: then the seams between the elements will be almost invisible.
It is not difficult to calculate the amount of material with such a scheme; it is recommended to purchase it with a small margin.
Foundation Requirements
Do-it-yourself parquet board can be laid both on a wooden floor and on a concrete base. Installation technology requires the following conditions:
- The base must be solid and perfectly level. Permissible deviation - no more than 2 mm for every 2 meters of surface length.
- Be sure to have a substrate and high-quality waterproofing. This will not only help save the material and increase thermal insulation. Thanks to the substrate, the floor covering will be able to move slightly relative to the base, which will avoid its damage due to different amounts of expansion under the influence of external conditions.
The concrete base must be checked for cracks and irregularities.Minor defects must be repaired, if necessary, a new leveling screed must be poured. Further work is possible only after its complete hardening.
If you plan to mount a parquet board on a wooden floor, you will need to conduct a thorough revision. If the condition of the coating is close to ideal, you can limit it to grinding. Elimination of significant defects may require more extensive repairs, up to a complete floor rebuild.
The plank floor is poor in the relative freedom of movement of its individual elements, so it is recommended to lay the parquet board on plywood, which is better moisture resistant. She will give him the required integrity.
Possible use plywood and for leveling concrete floors: it is attached to it by means of special mastic and dowels.
Substrate hydro and thermal insulation
The most important point is the arrangement of the substrate and waterproofing.
- The waterproofing film is spread in strips so that the elements are overlapped by 15–20 cm. It must also be brought onto the walls to a height of at least 5 cm.
- A heat insulator consisting of foamed polyethylene, polystyrene or cork is laid on top. Between themselves, the individual strips are connected with adhesive tape.
- A compensating gap of 10 mm wide is left between the heat insulator and the wall.
For the glueless method, nothing else is required, and when using glue, the top layer of the substrate is moisture-resistant plywood, attached to the base with dowels.
Laying the finish coat
How to lay a parquet board correctly? As it is already clear, there are two ways to lay parquet: “floating” and on glue. Mounting on glue is more reliable, but the elements of such a coating are much more difficult to replace if necessary. Glueless method allows you to produce without much effort parquet plank replacementthat has fallen into disrepair. These methods differ only in some nuances.
Important! Be sure to allow the material to mature in the room for at least two days before laying, so that the boards adapt to the microclimate. Only after that you can proceed with the installation. The temperature and humidity parameters recommended by the manufacturer must be observed in the room.
Glueless (floating) method
To visualize how to lay a parquet board in a "floating" method, you can watch a video tutorial.
The sequence of actions is as follows:
- The first row of parquet planks should be separated from the wall by a thermal gap not exceeding the width of the future plinth. It is very convenient to use special plastic inserts placed every half meter.
- At the first row, you need to carefully cut down the upper lock - this is exactly what the side of the board will be facing the wall.
- The first element is laid in place, after which a second board is brought to it from the end. It is necessary to connect them using a special wedge lock. To do this, it is enough to lightly knock on the junction with your hand or a rubber mallet. So the whole line is going in stages. To complete it, it may be necessary to saw off part of the parquet plank, for which an electric jigsaw is used.
- The second row should be located with some offset relative to the first. To do this, you can use the trim remaining from the first row: its length must be at least 500 mm.
You can attach each board of the second row in order, or you can assemble the entire row and then connect it to the first.
- To fix the rows between each other, the boards of the added row are brought in at a slight angle, and then lowered, closing the lock. If you want to knock out the elements a little, then this operation is performed through a wooden block.
In places where it is necessary to bypass pipes or other communications, cutouts are made.They should provide a gap of 1-2 mm between the board and, for example, a pipe. When laying in the door area, it is necessary to make a cutout not only in the parquet plank, but also in the box, and then insert the covering element there. To connect parquet in different rooms, special sills are used.
glue method
The adhesive method is distinguished by the fact that before laying each parquet row, a layer of special glue is applied to the base, slightly wider than the parquet lath being laid. The joints between the elements are also glued. Walking on such a coating is possible only after the complete hardening of the fixing composition.
A video will help to present in more detail the process of installing such a coating with your own hands.
At the final stage, the restrictive wedges are removed, the protruding waterproofing is trimmed and the skirting boards are attached.
It is quite possible to lay the parquet flooring yourself. The scale of savings can be estimated if you find out how much it costs to lay a square meter of parquet flooring in local construction companies.
Price
The price of laying a parquet board using a floating method in Moscow is 270-350 rubles/m2, in St. Petersburg - 170-350 rubles/m2.
The cost of installation with a glue method is 550–850 rubles/m2 in the capital and 300–550 rubles/m2 in St. Petersburg.
