Laminate and luxury vinyl plank have become the default flooring choice for good reasons. They handle kids, pets, and humidity better than hardwood, they cost a fraction as much, and modern planks look genuinely convincing. They're also the flooring most likely to be installed badly, because the planks click together so easily that it's tempting to skip everything that comes first.
The subfloor is the whole game. Manufacturers generally want the floor flat within a small tolerance over a span of several feet, and most older Louisville homes are not that flat out of the box. Where the subfloor dips, the planks bridge the gap and flex underfoot; over time that flexing works the locking edges apart and you get separated seams and a hollow sound when you walk. Where there's a high spot, the planks rock and the joints wear.
So real prep means pulling up the old flooring, checking the subfloor across the room with a straightedge, filling the low spots with leveling compound, and sanding or cutting down the high spots. Any soft or water-damaged decking gets cut out and replaced — no underlayment compensates for a subfloor that flexes. On concrete, moisture matters too, and a proper barrier goes down before anything else.
Expansion gaps are the other detail that gets ignored. These floors are floating — they expand and contract with temperature and humidity as one large sheet. They need a gap at every wall and every fixed object, hidden behind the baseboard or quarter round. Planks butted tight to the wall have nowhere to go when they expand, so they lift in the middle of the room. That failure looks dramatic and is almost always this one mistake.
Transitions matter for the same reason. Where the floor meets tile, carpet, or another room, a proper transition strip covers the gap while still letting the floor move. Running plank straight through a doorway with no break looks clean on day one and telegraphs problems later.
Done right, a laminate or vinyl plank floor is one of the best-value improvements in a house. Done fast, it's a floor you replace twice. Call Aldana Construcción at (502) 436-3628 for a free written estimate.