It’s no lie that real wood flooring can transform your home, aside from being extremely practical. However, once you start adding up all the costs of installation, the whole process can start to become pretty expensive, with some fitters charging up to £15 per square metre. As a result of the ever increasing prices a lot of people have turned to a DIY approach and this post aims to help those who may be considering installing their new floor themselves.

We know that the thought of installing a real wood product can often be daunting and sometimes make them reconsider their purchase and turn to artificial products such as laminate or vinyl instead. Well, we’re here to explain why you don’t need to do this anymore because the fitting process is quite simple once you get started!

There are a variety of real wood products on the market but there are only really two main joining methods; either click or tongue and groove. 

Tongue & Groove:

A tongue and groove product can be installed as a floating floor, nailed down or glued down. All you require when installing a floating floor is underlay, PVA wood glue and a joint locking tool. All you have to do is place PVA wood glue along the tongue of one plank and insert this into the groove of another plank; easy! It is not necessary, but if you would like to further secure a tongue and groove product to the subfloor you can nail or glue it down to the subfloor. In order to nail the joints to the subfloor or floor joists you will require a professional flooring gun, this will help reduce any movement. Gluing down a floor has the same effect as adhesive is placed on the subfloor and planks are placed on top of the adhesive.

If that sounds a little confusing please don’t worry! The alternative option is ‘click’ flooring, which is widely available from many retailers and is a much easier option for installation.

Click Method:

Described as “a revolutionary product”, click method joining was designed to make life easy and it does just that! This method is also known as click lock or interlocking, the product is pretty self-explanatory as the joints simply ‘click’ together. Due to the strength of the interlocking joint, there is no need for any PVA wood glue to be applied. Many people have compared the installation of click flooring to be similar to completing a jigsaw, only you don’t have to search for the missing pieces in this puzzle! The exact same click system is used when installing laminate flooring products too. Therefore, the decision between laminate and engineered flooring should be based on appearance alone and most definitely not on the ease of installation.

So there you have it, the difference between Tongue & Groove and Click method installation, of course if you don’t feel comfortable installing flooring yourself there is always the option mentioned above of hiring a professional to do the dirty work for you!

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