LESLIE: Alright. Now we’ve got Pastor Chris on the line who’s doing to a – looking to do some repairs at the church. Tell us what’s going on.
PASTOR CHRIS: Yeah, hi there. Well, I’m a pastor of a church, like you said, and we have raised about $4,600 and we want to put a new floor down.
LESLIE: OK.
TOM: OK.
PASTOR CHRIS: And we were thinking about doing carpeting and we were concerned that the high traffic would make that difficult to keep nice. And so we thought we would – might use laminate flooring.
TOM: I think it’s a good choice and there are a wide variety of qualities out there. But since it’s a commercial use, I would use a commercial-grade laminate flooring.
Now, laminate flooring, Chris, can look just like hardwood, it can look like stone, it could look like tile, so you have a lot of options in terms of the appearance of the floor. Installation is easy; most of it locks together. There’s a very thin underlayment that goes under. You don’t attach it or glue it to the floor in any way; it just locks together.
LESLIE: It just sort of snaps together.
TOM: You leave a little gap around the outside and then you trim with molding to cover that gap and then the floor just kind of rides there; it floats. And it’s good stuff. You might want to take a look at the website for LumberLiquidators.com. They are a major supplier of laminate flooring. They’ve been a sponsor of our show for a long time and they’ve some good stuff and they’ve got some great prices.
PASTOR CHRIS: Oh, OK, great. We were a little concerned with the laminate flooring, whether or not – if people spill coffee on the floor, if we mop it up fairly quickly, we were wondering whether it would start buckling or peeling or would we have trouble with that?
LESLIE: No, no, no.
TOM: I raised three kids on a laminate floor and it’s really pretty indestructible stuff.
LESLIE: The only time I’ve ever heard anyone having any sort of issue with a laminate is in a flood situation where water got underneath the laminate, between the subfloor and the laminate itself and that caused an issue. If you’re spilling something on the surface, you’re not going to have a problem.
PASTOR CHRIS: Oh, OK. OK. Well, that answers my question.
How would I know the difference – when I look at the website, will it tell me that it’s a commercially-based product or …?
TOM: There’s a test called a Taber Abrasion Test where they spin an abrasive disk into the surface and that dictates how durable it is.
PASTOR CHRIS: OK.
TOM: And so, they should have information on that. If you call them up, they’ll give you information on what the most appropriate products are for your particular use.
PASTOR CHRIS: Alright. Well, very good. I appreciate your time.
TOM: You’re welcome, Chris. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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