The laminate flooring craze is taking over so many households. That’s because this home decorating trend is affordable, durable, and easy to maintain. Plus, you have a lot of different styles and colors to choose from, so you can find the perfect flooring for your home.
If you’re thinking about installing laminate flooring, you need to know about the proper tools and techniques so that you can do the job right. It’s crucial to learn about the installation process and familiarize yourself with the necessary tools so that you can avoid making mistakes. This will save you from spending more time and effort correcting the flooring placements. Furthermore, you can avoid spending more money on fixing your flooring.
In this article, we’ll give you a recommendation of four essential tools for laminate flooring installation and give you detailed information about why they’re the perfect tools for you. Let’s start!
Universal Laminate Flooring Tools You Can’t Live Without
Whether you’re a beginner or a pro at installing laminate flooring, there are some essential tools you just can’t live without. Here are four of the most important hand tools to have in your toolbox.
Estwing Deadhead Rubber Mallet
Highlights
- Estwing’s mallet has a Deadhead technology that reduces bounce for a non-marring advantage and enhanced control.
- Its premium rubber head effectively eliminates the likelihood of damages to your striking surface.
- The mallet has a hickory handle designed to fit your grip to ensure comfort and control.
- It’s a multi-use mallet that you can use for different applications, such as laminate flooring installations, tile settings, upholstery work, and metal sheet forming.
- The mallet’s rubber head has two color options; gray and black.
- The company offers two sizes for the mallet; one weighs 12 oz., and the other weighs 18 oz.
Drawbacks
- The mallet’s plastic piece holding the rubber head and handle together has limited sturdiness.
Our Verdict
The Estwing Deadhead Mallet is perfect for smoothing installation surfaces because of its non-bounce feature. So despite its sturdiness, it ensures your striking surface won’t get damaged during installation. In addition, the mallet is lightweight, and it has an exceptionally comfortable handle that’s specially designed to fit your grip. Thus, it causes minimal arm fatigue.
With its user-friendly design, you can enjoy accurate strike control based on your needs. Its rubber head also reduces the risk of it slipping from your grip during consistent heavy use. Furthermore, it is suitable for many different applications, like laminate flooring installations, tile settings, metal sheet forming, and more. So it’s the perfect addition to your laminate flooring tool kit.
Big Max Professional-Grade Pull Bar
Highlights
- Big Max’s professional-grade pull bar is made of durable powder-coated steel that ensures long-lasting use.
- It’s specially designed for every type of tongue and groove flooring installation, including laminated flooring, vinyl plank flooring, hardwood flooring, and more.
- The pull bar can pull together base flooring materials without leaving any gaps with its precision-formed lips designed to fit tight spaces against the wall.
- The installation tool ensures that you can perfectly install even the most stubborn planks with its reinforced striker end.
- It has underside felt pads that prevent plank edges from marring and protect your floor finish.
Drawbacks
- No disadvantages have been found yet while using the pull bar.
Our Verdict
Big Max’s professional-grade pull bar is designed to work with every type of flooring installation, including laminated, vinyl, and hardwood floors, making it a customer favorite. There hasn’t been any customer review pointing out any product disadvantages either.
The pull bar has precision-formed lips that fit tight spaces against the wall without leaving any gaps. Additionally, it has felt backing pads that prevent the installation process from damaging plank edges. So you can expect the durable tool to help you flawlessly install even the most stubborn laminate floorboards.
Striker XXL Tapping Block
Highlights
- The Striker XXL tapping block is an all-in-one product that doesn’t require a flooring mallet to use in flooring installation.
- It has an ideal weight of 45 oz and optimum balance to set tongue-and-groove planks into place with just a few strikes.
- Striker XXL has a long-lasting, durable construction with materials including high-density polyethylene. It’s also corrosion-resistant because of its matte coating.
- The tapping block’s smooth hardwood handle conveniently ensures a faster and safer installation process of your click-together flooring.
- This essential tool has rounded corners specially designed to help you strike planks at any angle.
Drawbacks
- No disadvantages have been found yet while using the all-in-one tapping block.
Our Verdict
Installing laminate flooring planks in angled spaces can be tricky. First, you will need a laminate flooring angle tool to accurately cut the planks. After that, you have to make a lot of adjustments to install them with precision. Our favorite thing about Marshaltown’s Striker XXL tapping block is that you can set up flooring planks at any angle with the fewest strikes compared to similar products.
Additionally, it’s an all-in-one tapping block, so you don’t need to use a flooring mallet during installation. It’s also very convenient to use with its smooth hardwood handle, ensuring a faster and safer process. Thus, Striker XXL has made a reputable name in the flooring industry with its exceptional design and performance. There are no reported disadvantages while using it, giving customers maximum satisfaction.
TFloor Spacers
Highlights
- The TFloor spacers are ideal for laminate flooring, engineered hardwood, vinyl, bamboo, subfloor panels, and more.
- Its patented t-shape design ensures the correct expansion gap between your walls and floor during installation.
- The wedges come with a convenient design that makes them easy to install regardless of the flooring material’s thickness and wall’s height.
- The product package comes with twelve spacers that are sufficient for 500 ft sq. areas of installation.
Drawbacks
- The floor spacers can sometimes slip during installation.
Our Verdict
TFloor spacers are very versatile, so you can use them for various applications. They are the perfect flooring spacers for laminate, bamboo, hardwood, and vinyl flooring installation. In addition, we love its customer-friendly design that allows you to put the spacers in place easily. This ensures the correct expansion gap between your walls and floor during installation. Thus, you don’t have to make any adjustments afterward.
The product package also has enough spacers for 500 ft sq. areas, covering wide household areas. So you can save a lot of money while ensuring a perfect flooring installation.
Final Thoughts
Anyone who’s ever installed laminate flooring knows that it’s not an easy task. It takes a lot of effort, and there’s a lot of risk for damage if you don’t have the right tools to install your laminate floor flawlessly. So we hope that you’ve found our flooring tool recommendations useful. They are the best brands for each tool, so you can expect exceptional installation results.
If you’re interested in learning more about flooring installation kit inclusions or laminate flooring repair tools, feel free to explore our website!
May 2, 2022
