Tar Paper and Laminate Floor.....

[Justin Jump]

Crazy question......

In my search for a cheap floor covering, other than just painting it, I was thinking of going with a low cost laminate, after all, it just a shop floor, and if the plans ever change, I can change out the laminate rather quickly....

Any concerns on using laminate?

Second question - I have 2 rolls of tar paper left over from the build - anyone see any concerns using this as an underlayment?

Thx!!

-Justin

[Andrew Nemeth]

Justin,
I would hesitate to use most laminate flooring in a shop. My experience is that it is very slippery when dusty. Maybe there are anti-slip laminates avaiable. I'm pretty sure you can get $1/sf unfinished "utility" grade 3/4" hardwood floor (hickory or oak). You would have to do significantly more surface prep to go over concrete but I would be a really nice shop floor.
-Andrew

[Justin Jump]

I looked at utility grade, but with the sanding and finishing costs, it starts to add up - and my budget is very tight.

I do however have AdvanceTech 3/4" T&G subflooring, my shop is on the second floor of my addition, which does leave that possibilty open....

[ian maybury]

I've just laid an 8mm mid range Kronos laminate floor http://www.flooring2floors.co.uk/krono/camargue-oak.html in a rental property, and was quite impressed by it. Slipperiness when dusty is for sure a possible issue, but maybe if you checked out/tested one (like the above) that is embossed with a fake woodgrain and impregnated with an abrasive for grip it could well be OK.

On the positive side (check the rating - there's domestic/heavy domestic/light commercial/heavy commercial grades designated by letters) laid over 2mm polyethylene foam underlay (which costs very little) it's potentially a nicely sprung floor with much better wear resistance than wood - at a price that's hard to beat. Especially if you can pick some up discount...

ian

[Bruce Seidner]

I recently had an office space built out and chose a mid-high grade of Armstrong wood laminate flooring over the existing concrete.

It was beautiful and got lots of compliments.

BUT, it is about as soft and vulnerable to dents and creases as I could have imagined or feared. A side chair with 1" casters has gouged the floor badly with infrequent use. I don't want to experiment but I would aver that if I pushed a metal 12' measuring tape off my desk it would create a crater of a dent. This really surprised me because I have lived in a very modest 1948 brick rancher that is wood floor throughout for about 27 years now and have never dented or creased the floor through activities of daily living. Come to think of it I have had some mishaps that required repair, but with plain hardwood it was pretty easy to fill, sand, and stain. My experience with laminates is that I am very underwhelmed by their performance under use.

I can't imagine what a laminate floor would look like with normal shop use. I have seen wood for sale on Craig's list and on Ebay from people selling used flooring or re-purposing barn wood, etc. I would look for alternate sources if the budget were tight. I don't know the cost or logistics of weight and construction in your situation, but concrete has always been my floor of choice but I am not primarily a hand tool wood worker and with larger woodworking machines, maintenance requirements of machines, etc. it has always been concrete floors for me. I have never thought about putting in wood floors to be honest.

Good luck with your new space.

[Don Sundberg]

We put Armstrong laminate in our study and I am not that impressed. It was some fairly high end stuff, at 12mm thick, but I have had a few incidents with it in the first year of having it. Dropped a impact driver off of the ladder and put a nice gouge in the middle of the floor from the bit. Had to take the floor apart and replace the panel. As far as general wear & tear the office chairs in the room have not torn up the surface yet so short of dropping a tool it seems to be ok.

We have laminate in our kitchen as a quick and dirty way of getting rid of some horribly worn out carpet. It was some 99c on sale Tarkett flooring from Menards. It has held up pretty well. It has already lasted longer than I expected, and looks like it will make it until we remodel the kitchen. No dents or dings from getting stuff dropped on it.

I think laminate would make a nice floor in the shop, but in the shop I wouldn't be as picky about the occasional dings and scratches. It's all about the character of a well used shop.

Don

[Bruce Seidner]

It's all about the character of a well used shop.

Don

I would not want to dismiss the character of a shop. My floors and benches end up with ever changing patterns of stain, oils, and all. But I think that the laminate does not have a thick enough skin to show marks of work that are a sign of character. If scars are tattoos with a story, I can look and see some dents and gouges in an inch or two thick surface around here. I fear that rather than scars you would end up with puncture wounds that not did not heal but are infected. I don't know the effect of water or other solvents getting below the top laminate in these products. In my home with old hard wood floors it is wood I am repairing after a mishap. I am not so comfortable recommending a plastic/wood laminate that I know will be damaged repeatedly. I had high hopes for the Armstrong laminate I put in my office. It wasn't the most expensive line but it was the second most expensive line. The main savings over a hard wood floor was labor. I am pretty bummed that after a year of office walking around, moving chairs, and a coffee cup or two dropping to the floor it looks like I am going to have to find a way to repair a number of spots, which means replacing the flooring, something I did not contemplate. I will say that it has held up in high traffic areas and that walking on the stuff has had no effect and still looks very good. With all due respect to the craft involved in pen turning, I think this would be the upper limit I would recommend so far as projects over this stuff.

[Bas Pluim]

I have laminate in my shop, the cheap beech stuff from Lumber Liquidators (http://www.lumberliquidators.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=21158). I've had it for about 2 years, and it has held up well. The surface has a slight roughness which helps against slippage. I've never had any issues, even with a good bit of sawdust on the floor. But, I do always wear sneakers with a good profile. It is definitely smoother than concrete. If time and money was no object, I would have preferred real wood for the floor, but this was the next best thing.

I've made a couple of dents and dings in the floor (when the chisel falls of the bench, let it drop....you can touch up the edge in minutes, but big slices in your hand take weeks to heal), but I paid $370 for 600sq.ft. (including underlayment), so I'm not too worried about damage. It's a shop floor. Spilling glue can be bad, once it dries you can't get it off without damaging the top layer. Also, laminate doesn't do well with moisture. My basement is bone dry so it's not a problem, but if your concrete floor is damp or there is the danger of water coming in, laminate is not a good choice. I have a separate area for finishing, so I don't have any concerns about spilling stains, varnish etc.

I used the cheap blue foam underlayment. I would not use tar paper, you need to foam to account for imperfections in the floor. It also provides nice insulation. As for looks...

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/1163/medium/jointer_planer_installed.jpg

[Bruce Seidner]

That is nice looking shop!

But when you do get a gouge or crease, how do you repair this stuff?

[Bas Pluim]

That is nice looking shop!

But when you do get a gouge or crease, how do you repair this stuff?
Laminate is not really repairable. Most laminate manufacturers sell touch-up kits for minor damage. Of course, small scratches can be touched up with a wax pen/ marker, just like furniture. If I ever get a big gouge, I might try some epoxy, but it will never be invisible. It is what it is. A shop floor. Even a damaged, scuffed and dented laminate floor looks better than painted concrete (which is what the floor originally was). 10 years down the road, I may need to replace it. A friend of mine has Barricade tiles (http://www.ovrx.com/basement-flooring.html) in his shop, which he finished with a few coats of floor polyurethane. Depending on how long my current floor lasts, I may go with something like that in the future.

[Bruce Seidner]

That makes good sense for a shop floor and some epoxy here and there to keep it sealed would still outclass and be more comfortable that concrete. I think there are people who need concrete though. I am rebuilding an older table saw by myself and the lifting, scraping, and toil of getting that puppy off the stand and onto the floor and up to a work bench was not pretty. I would have destroyed anything less than concrete. But your shop looks great. Maybe one day I will move out of my cinder block and concrete floor cave. Actually, I am putting up some Ash backer board that was not expensive to look at something besides pegboard and OSB. But my walls are clearly safer than my floors.

[Ron Natalie]

I have industrial rubber in my shop (my wife picked it out, it's the same floor in the laundry and the back hall).

If you do go with the laminate floor, if you're really talking tar paper (impregnated felt or whatever), I would not use that. THere's really only two reasons to put down underlayment under the laminate: one is to allow it to slide better during installation (which has no long term benefit and tar paper would be counter to in my estimation) and the other is the slighly squishy stuff which deadens the "clacking" it would have over the floating substrate (again tar paper wouldn't be a good idea). In synopsis: use a proper sounddeading stuff or nothing, but nothing is acceptable.

[Jim Andrew]

Think I would prefer subfloor to laminate. Would be nice if it were sealed, so it doesn't stain easily, or discolor. But it is a shop. A finished floor just doesn't seem rignt.

[Clint Olver]

Go with laminate, it's great! Here a thread about my shop floor:

http:// forum.canadianwoodworking.com/showthread.php?42074-My-new-floor

C

[ian maybury]

To come in again. No, it's not real wood - and that triggers all sorts of prejudice. But viewed objectively it has several major advantages - low cost, speed of laying, wear resistant surface in decent grades, sprung floor etc. As before i think it's worth very serious consideration.

My only real caution if the right type is chosen (one with a grip enhancer) would be that the weight of a machine resting on it seems likely to cause slight depressions by crushing the 2mm polyethylene foam underlay. Which is unlikely to be a big problem unless you are moving the machines a lot, or want in future to return the workshop to living room use...

ian

ian

[Bruce Seidner]

Ian, I think you have put your finger on its main vulnerability, just don't do it very hard, because the floor will compress and dent. The link provided by Clint demonstrates what a clever and well engineered product this stuff is. My pic's show how a simple chair, with no one sitting in it compresses the material. It really is that soft, but this is the Armstrong and maybe there are sturdier lines out there.

That said, it is pretty easy to install and they have thought of everything. Now I think I am going to do the basement laundry room in the line that Clint shared or the variant I can find locally. But just like you need cup holders for hot and cold drinks that you would not place on a nice Mahogany dinner table because of the ring that would form, ANYWHERE you place a stick of furniture it WILL dent, and it will be crushed and permanent. I would urge you as a lessor of a space to supply your lessees with those plastic floor protectors that spread the weight from a couch or table leg. Either that or get a large damage deposit because while I agree it is a great idea for a basement workshop that can be patched with epoxy without the wife going off, the same will not be true when these people move out and you see the damage that normal furniture placement creates. I think of it kind of like I think about the Ikea book shelves I put in my new office. I was in my last office space for almost 20 years and I had a cabinet maker build all the book cases and storage. He made his own doors and it was constructed of Poplar and Baltic Birch because it was all painted. To build out similar shelves 20 years later would have cost over 6x's as much. I had it priced by several people and was shocked. So I went with the Ikea shelving and cabinets. They look great and you can tell they decided where they could use composite OSB, versus mdf, versus plywood, versus hardwood in the same piece of furniture. I was really impressed at the engineering and accounting involved. They made it as cheap as they could and for it still to be well made and serviceable. But I do not expect that I will be handing this stuff down to my grandchildren. I really am not being critical of this flooring material or the choice to use it. I do want to sound the alarm because no one told me about this when I put the stuff in my office a year ago. I don't know that it would have changed my decision because I doubt I will be in this space more than ten years. I just wish I had know so I could have taken some precautions and have had a more realistic idea of its strengths and deficits.

[Ron Natalie]

In my house in Virginia in the room with the endless pool, I put down this stuff from Home Depot which is an armstrong floating vinyl. Goes down even faster than laminate. Each piece has a "tongue" of face up sticky stuff that mates with the grove (Really more of a shiplap than t&g) on the next piece. You cut it by scoring with a utility knife and folding it. It is BY FAR the fastest install I've ever done on a floor (and I've done everything from traditional full thickness finished in place hardwood to just about anything else you can imagine). Relatively inexpensive and should work well in a shop in my opinion.

Of course the most interesting workroom floor I've seen was made out of "endgrain plywood" (imagine cutting lots of strips of plywood laid veneer to venner across the room with the plies exposed) covered with many many coats of "Mr. Johnson's" wax.

[Maurice Ungaro]

I looked at utility grade, but with the sanding and finishing costs, it starts to add up - and my budget is very tight.

I do however have AdvanceTech 3/4" T&G subflooring, my shop is on the second floor of my addition, which does leave that possibilty open....
It's just a shop floor...are you sure you want to sand and finish it! Just playing the Dutch uncle here, but (and you did not say how big an area), you can sand that thing out yourself. Rent a machine for $20 a day, and mop the finish on yourself. For uber cheap/practical finish (it's a shop, right?), roll on some clear deck stain.

As for the laminate, which I used to sell, don't use the tar paper. You'll think you're walking on concrete. Also, it's slippery than whale snot with sawdust on it.

[Ron Natalie]

I agree with Maurice. I was a little reticent to sand/finish my own floors when I did my first one and hired it out. After watching the guy do it, I realized it's no big thing (and golly, it's a shop so if you blemish the floor at some point, who cares?).