Bamboo Flooring DIY

How do we replace old carpet with Bamboo Engineered Hardwood Floor? We researched and shopped for the right Bamboo, color and size for our 4 bedrooms and the hallway up stairs. 

 

This year, our home project is replacing upstairs carpet with Bamboo flooring. There are 2 types of Bamboo – Engineered and Solid – The Solid don’t come in click and lock which is easier, Engineered one does have, so we selected Engineered Bamboo. Our floor is plywood so we want to use Underlayment, vapor and sound barrier. 

The project of replacing the old carpet with hardwood floor is not hard, just need well planning and time to do it correctly. Since we finished our and it came quite nicely, we would like to give some pointers to get yours done better.

1. Choosing the right Bamboo planks for the perfect layouts on rooms. Most of the rooms have the same width or length, measure them to find the same measurement. The planks would come in pre-cut length and width, measure them. For our rooms average of 10 feet width and 11-12 feet wide. We bought 3 feet planks by 5.2″ width, we didn’t have to cut much off the last row. The planks running side way can be cut to have staggered look, so it can be any sizes, but 36″ is better than 48″ for small rooms. Find out how do they planks come in a box, for ours, it’s 26sft/box. We bought about 3 boxes extra and returned 2, keep one for spares.

2. The cost of the planks are dependent upon the thickness and water resistance. Less than $3/sqft planks are not water resistance and less than 1/2″ thick, Cali Bamboo has quality planks, but it cost over $5.5/sqft. The color is also important for our rooms, we wanted gray bamboo. We also looked at that has many parts less expensive than Lowe’s or Home Depot.

3. Find out on the sub floor under the carpet, plywood or cement. Our were plywood panels, so it’s quite easy and just need to buy some underlayment materials to place between the plywood floors and the bamboo planks.

The bamboo planks we got need to be sitting in the room for 1 week before installation.

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