The subfloor decides how the floor turns out
Click-lock floors float. They are not fastened down, so every hump and hollow underneath is transmitted up through the planks as bounce, as a click underfoot, and eventually as separated joints where the locking edges have worked themselves loose. Most manufacturers ask for flatness within roughly 3 mm over a 1.8 m span, about an eighth of an inch over six feet, and that tolerance is the line between a floor that lasts and a warranty claim that gets refused.
So the first job is always the floor you already have. High spots in plywood get sanded or planed off, hollows get filled with a levelling compound, loose sheets get screwed back into the joists with proper subfloor screws, and squeaks get chased down while everything is stripped and easy to reach.
Choosing between laminate and vinyl plank flooring
The first of the pair is a printed layer over a fibreboard core. Laminate looks sharp, resists scratching well and suits bedrooms, hallways and living rooms above grade. Water is its weakness. A spill left sitting at a joint swells the core, and there is no undoing that once it happens.
Luxury vinyl plank is plastic the whole way through, so it shrugs water off. That makes it the sensible pick for basements, kitchens, laundry rooms and rental units where spills get reported late. It is softer underfoot and marks more easily under heavy furniture legs, so felt pads matter. For a below-grade slab anywhere in the GTA, I will nearly always steer you towards vinyl plank.
How the floor goes down
Boxes come into the room and sit for a couple of days first, so the material settles to the temperature and humidity it will live in. Over a concrete slab the build-up needs a vapour barrier, either a poly sheet or an underlay with one built into it. Over plywood, an underlay suited to the product and to how quiet you want the room.
- Expansion gap of roughly 8 to 10 mm at every wall and fixed object
- End joints staggered by at least 300 mm (12 in) between rows
- Planks drawn tight with a tapping block, never struck on the edge
- Door casings undercut so planks slide underneath them
- Rows planned so the final one is not a thin sliver
- Underlay seams taped rather than left open
That expansion gap is not a detail to skip. Vinyl in particular moves with temperature, and a floor pinned tight against the walls will lift into a ridge somewhere in the middle of the room. The gap disappears under the baseboard or the shoe moulding, so nothing shows.
Doors, transitions and the finishing details
Undercutting the door casings and jambs is what makes a floor look installed rather than laid down. I cut them with an oscillating tool using a scrap of plank and underlay as the height guide, so the flooring runs underneath the trim with no visible gap and none of the ugly notching you see when someone has cut the plank around the moulding instead.
Transitions get chosen for the situation. A T-mould where two floating floors of equal height meet, a reducer stepping down to tile or sheet vinyl, an end cap at a sliding door. Interior doors that now catch on a thicker floor come off and get trimmed at the bottom. Appliances go back, trim goes back on, and the room is usable as soon as I finish.
Condos, repairs and things worth knowing
Many Toronto condo declarations set a minimum acoustic rating for underlay before any hard surface floor can be installed, and property management will want the specification before they approve the work. I fit to whatever your building requires rather than find out about it afterwards.
One damaged plank in the middle of a room can usually be swapped without redoing the floor, either by unclicking rows back from the nearest wall or by cutting the board out and gluing in a replacement with its lower tongue trimmed off. If the existing floor is old vinyl tile from before the nineties, I do not sand it or break it up. That vintage can contain asbestos, so it either stays undisturbed under the new floor or goes to an abatement contractor.
