LESLIE: Going to Nebraska where you can find The Money Pit on KCNI and we’ve got June. How can we help?
JUNE: I have a question about Formica flooring. It looks like a wood floor but I set a sack of garbage on it and guess what? It leaked and I have a bump. I have two bumps where it leaked into a crack and will this go down or what do I need to do?
TOM: It’s a laminate floor?
JUNE: Yes.
TOM: And it’s a Formica laminate floor?
JUNE: Yes.
TOM: That’s very unusual because I actually have a Formica laminate floor and I’ve actually …
LESLIE: And they’re like indestructible.
TOM: I immersed it in water and haven’t been able to get it to swell.
JUNE: Really?
TOM: So what I’m thinking is that what’s swelling is the subfloor underneath; not the actual laminate itself.
JUNE: OK.
TOM: And is this one of the older Formica floors that you had to glue together? How long …
JUNE: No, it snapped together.
TOM: It snapped together. OK. Because I’m wondering if you can get enough tiles out and disassemble enough tiles to be able to address the floor underneath because I suspect it’s not the laminate but it’s the subfloor. And so you need to get to …
JUNE: OK, I have a couple of pieces left over so that would work, wouldn’t it?
LESLIE: Oh, yeah.
TOM: If you can get – right, if you can sort of disassemble the floor – that’s the advantage of the snap-together floor – if you can disassemble it to the point where you can get to the subfloor, you can correct the subfloor and then reassemble it. You may not, in fact, need any tiles if you can get them apart correctly.
What I would suggest that you do, June, before you start taking things apart, is to take a dry-erase marker – the kind you use on the wipe-off boards – and number the actual floor pieces – you know, one, two, three, four and so on – so that when you take them apart you’ll be putting them back together exactly how they came apart.
JUNE: It’s just two pieces, so …
LESLIE: Oh, that’s great.
TOM: (overlapping voices) Well then, that’s easy. You only need two numbers that way.
JUNE: Yeah. One, two.
TOM: (chuckling) OK.
JUNE: OK. Thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome, June, and thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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