Repairing the Water Damage to Laminate Floors: An Easy Guideline!
How to repair water damage to laminate floors?
A laminate flooring generally is resistant to water damage, however, it still faces damage due to excess of moisture. But the good thing about laminate floors is that the water damage can be repaired easily without peeling the entire floor. This is because the flooring type is made of many sections that are locked together.
Here we will be discussing about repairing the water damage and drying the floor underneath, which form the part of the cleaning process. And the final step calls for putting down the new laminate in place of the section that is damaged.
Repairing and drying the laminate floors
In most of the cases, laminate floors get flooded when there is a leakage in a dishwasher, refrigerator or washing machine. Other than these, any standing water can cause the damage. The very first thing you have to do is determining the place of damage and fixing it. Once this is done, the floor must be dried well. You can complete the task by mopping or by using a wet-dry vacuum. After drying the excess of water, a fan must be placed on the floor to dry the floorboards beneath before repairing the damaged sections.
You can make use of a circular saw or crowbar to fix the water damage by removing the wet sections. Using a chisel and hammer, start pulling the damaged pieces, ensuring all the while that the surrounding area is not ruined. Next the tongue part of the laminate board must be removed with the help of a knife. After removing the old laminate, put a fan on the floorboards to dry them. This must be done before you add the new material as it will prevent molds from growing in future as a result of moist floorboards.
Putting new laminate
Before putting the new laminate down, create a pattern matching the current flooring. Thereafter construction glue must be added. Then you must place the first piece into the right area as per the pattern. Make sure that you wipe off any extra glue before the area dries, and place heavy objects only when it’s fully dry. If you are willing to use nails instead of glue to repair the water damage laminate floors, you will first have to nail the first section of the new floorboard with the existing sections so that it fits compactly.