What floor to choose so that it is comfortable, beautiful, durable, and given that there is a small child in the house, it is also safe? Ceramic tiles are, of course, beautiful and such a floor will serve for a long time, but if you do not install additional floor heating, it is cold, and falling on it, given that the baby has just begun to walk, is very hard. No, you can put a carpet, and clean it and wash it all the time. And if you choose the material that does not require any special care and fits all of the above parameters, it is environmentally friendly. In general, for a large spacious room, a cork floor with a varnished polyurethane surface is the best fit.
Laying such a floor quickly is not easy. As with laying any floor, the surface to be covered must be perfectly flat. As a rule, either chipboard, or DSP or hardboard is used for laying the cork floor. But since we already have plywood 22 mm thick under the tile, it was decided to leave it as a pre-base.
Having started laying the cork floor with our own hands, and first of all we prepare the room.
We free the room from furniture, preventing dust from scattering around the rooms, we close the doorways with a film.
Using a perforator, we remove the old tile from the surface, and to make it easier and work faster, we immediately put the fragments of the dismantled tile into garbage bags. I take into account that there will be a lot of dust, but you need to breathe – it’s better to work in a respirator, and, of course, don’t forget about gloves.
Everything – the surface is prepared and cleared of excess dust. We apply a primer to the plywood with a roller, moving from the far corner of the room to the exit. After about 40 minutes, when the primer is absorbed and dried, we apply a self -leveling solution. To level the mixture, a toothed spatula is required, fixed on a long cuttings and a needle roller, as well as with a long cuttings. Pour the floor, level and leave to dry for several days while not ventilating the room, so that the surface of the screed does not crack due to the caused internal voltage of the solution.
When a self -leveling solution dries, you need to polish it to absolute smoothness, warm it again. The most difficult thing when laying a cork floor with your own hands is behind, but do not neglect the thoroughness of the preparation, since even the slightest unevenness will make itself felt and then it will remind itself for a long time.
In general, laying a cork floor based on glue is a technologically complex process, because nothing can be changed after gluing. Therefore, before starting work, you need to lay out the coating on the floor, defining the main guidelines. For laying our coating, a specialized glue is used, which is quite vigorous and has a strong smell, so this type of work is also best done in a respirator. The glue is applied in a thin layer and after 20 minutes of exposure – the cork slabs themselves are laid. Existing obstacles in the form of pipes, batteries of walls, corners are measured in advance, cut off and only then we lay the floor. Top coat with varnish and you’re done. As you can see, it is not so difficult to lay the cork floor with your own hands, and the eye will rejoice for a very long time, because even hits with heavy objects are not terrible for such a floor, there are no chips left on it, and the legs will walk on it with pleasure.