Laminate Floor Issues

IAmSherlocked

We currently have laminate wood flooring throughout our entire house (except for the kitchen), that the previous homeowners put down just before putting their house on the market. I've noticed that about 9 times out of 10 if something gets spilled on the floor, the seams between the boards start to buckle and bubble, even if we clean the mess up immediately. For example this morning DH spilled some coffee on his way out the door. In the time it took me to get from the foyer to the kitchen to grab a towel (all of 20 steps away) and clean up the mess, I could already see the boards starting to buckle at the edges. I dried it with a towel, grabbed my hair dryer to try and dry it out some more and then put something heavy on top of it to try and straighten the boards out (so far that seems to be the best way to minimize the damage but it's a PITA). 

Has anyone run into this? Any tips for preventing it? I had hoped that laminate floors would be easier to take care of than carpet, but that's not proving to be true for these. Our nephew is going to be spending a lot of time over at our house this summer and between him and our new puppy I envision lots of little spills.

For what it's worth I'm pretty sure that I've seen the same flooring at Costco (I think this is it even though it's on Costco's Canada site http://www.costco.ca/Golden-Select-Laminate-Flooring-Brandy.product.100097983.html). 

Thanks for your help!

pmontgomery87

My BF and I replaced all of the flooring in our old house with laminate so I know this type of floor from personal experience. It almost sounds like they didn't put any type of barrier between the subfloor and the new flooring. Usually there is a barrier of some sort that goes between the concrete (if it's the first floor) or plywood (if it's the second floor) that will keep the noise down and keep the floor from sliding. Also the measurements may have been off so you may have some space that you cant see under the baseboards and now the floor is shifting.  I hope this helps......

IAmSherlocked

Thanks for the info!  I'll have to try and see if I can pry up a small section to see if there is a barrier or something under there. If there isn't one down there do you think it would be easy enough to remove the flooring, put down the barrier and then put the same laminate flooring on top of that, or would we be better off replacing it all? I'm hoping for an easy and economical fix, but my gut is telling me that we'll probably end up having to replace the whole thing.

pmontgomery87

Laminate can be tricky. Especially if you have had issues with seperation/bubbling. I would plan on having to put new flooring. If you and your H don't have time to put it down yourselves (which isn't hard just time consuming) Home Depot sometimes
Offers whole home install for pretty cheap. Normally when you are removing laminate pieces will get damaged no matter how careful you are so that's why I say plan on getting new... At least then you know it's done correctly

IAmSherlocked

Thanks! Looks like I'll be pricing out new floors here in the very near future, just got to work that into the budget somehow.

Thanks again for the advice!

pmontgomery87

No problem!! B-)

pmontgomery87

let me know what you find out! :-)

ShellD13

If you have a lumber liquidators near you check their prices too.  They have laminate and hardwood flooring and they also do installs as well.  My H did our installation as someone else said it isn't hard to do just time consuming.  But I loved LL because we had gone in to look at samples and settled on one but were not planning on buying until we actually closed on our house.  Well a week before our closing they called us because they had registered us for that pattern and it had just gone on a 1/2 price sale.  They also agreed to let us order it in advance and hold it in their warehouse until after closing.

I will say we chose laminate as well because we thought it would stand up better to teens and dogs and we haven't been disappointed but there are big differences between laminate quality.  Our product was a full 1/4 in thicker than anything they offered at Home Depot or Lowes for the same price (even if you compared them using our products non sale price) and it had a built in noise reduction layer.

Great looking floors at 1/2 price - fantastic!