'tricks' to laying a laminate floor?

[59er]

I want to run my floating floor length-wise (front/back) and cover the kitchen/living room and area between the twin beds in our overlander.

when I've installed this in a regular (house) room, I seem to recall treating the layout like you would ceramic tile or reg. hardwood, where you find the centerline of the room, measure back to the starting wall then make a parallel line to the center the same distance as the shorter marks.

I guess some of this could apply to a trailer but mostly I'm curious about whether its best to start on the street side or curb side of the trailer?

[Melody Ranch]

The biggest problem I had with Pergo....any click together would be the same....was the last row. Not enough room to really pull into a latched condition. I made a small "L" shaped tool with a leg on it long enough to hit with a hammer. Also measure the total width of the hall ("bedroom area") and cut the first row laid so that when the last row is cut to fit it is not just a sliver width.

Rembember that the underlayment and the floor arise the level of the floor. Anything at floor level is affected....ie., fridge door, gaucho legs, cabinet doors, room diveder, etc.

Leave room for expansion.

[59er]

to start, did you have to cut the pieces to the correct profile, then click several pieces together, then slide this into place or just start at the wall and come outward?

good thoughts about the hall/sliver. hadn't considered that yet.

[Blu_Hwy_Lady]

I had read on these forums that it was better to lay the pieces across the width of the trailer rather than front to back as you plan on doing. It was good advice because as we got to the front of the trailer there was a definite warp in the floor in front of the door. Not so horrible that the sub-floor needed to be replaced, but definite enough to be an issue if we had laid the boards front to back. Because the pieces were side to side it could accomodate the warp without the boards popping up as they would if we'd gone front to back. A little bit of putty filled the gap. We've put about 9000 miles on her since we did the floor and have had no problems.

[Melody Ranch]

I started at the front, on the curb side in my case, worked across the front using a few boards cut to staggered lengths. From this starting point I came up the curb side with my next "row" of boards across, now having my staggered pattern established. My Caravel has curved sides and the cabinetry has a slight taper to the aft. So, the layout is not square and you cannot just lay the boards parallel to the base. I tried to scribe the pattern on the outside boards but then decided that the amount of curvature was such that if I aligned the board pattern to the centerline of the trailer I was only looking at a less than 1/2 inch gap at most. This gap could easily be covered with my 1/4 round base....and I avoided the agony of trying to cut the Pergo in a curved pattern. So, thats what I did. The gap also served as my expansion space at the sides. The worst job was that last board in the aft, street side corner. Trying to get a tight fit and clicked into place was not easy.