Misadventures of a Suburban Mom: My Review of 12mm Golden Teak Handscraped Laminate

Originally submitted at Lumber Liquidators

Handscraped appearance and texture... Just like Hardwood flooring!Kensington Manor by Dream Home - 12mm Golden Teak Laminate Flooring - 30 Year WarrantyKensington Manor is a premium 12mmlaminate + 3mm pre-glued underlaymentproduct line. What is unique is that most of the line has a handscraped fini...

Alternative to the expensive

By Brian and Nicole from Suburban Houston on 4/28/2012

Pros: Attractive Finish, Easy To Install, Beautiful Color, Easy To Clean

Best Uses: Kitchen, Office, Family Room, Living Room, Bedroom, Dining Room

Describe Yourself: Avid Do-It-Yourselfer

We debated between this product, the only laminate I liked, and the more expensive solid handscraped version that I fell in love with. This will eventually be installed in our entire upstairs. For this project, it was installed in a bedroom over our garage that has multiple closets and it's own bathroom and is currently being used by a teenager. It was installed in one of three closets, the span of the room, a bathroom and a landing. While it's not recommended for bathrooms, we have had laminate in two upstairs bathrooms, with each seam glued, and we have never had a problem as long as the room is properly vented during showers and dried out after each use.

We are avid-do-it-yourselfers. My husband actually did the entire job alone using two different saws, a flooring installation kit, and a bottle of a particular glue for the joints in the bathroom to keep moisture out. The entire install was about 260 sq ft, and he finished it in 5 hours. He said it was extremely easy to work with and was raving about it through the install. This was not the first time he has installed a laminate floor, and this went together so easily by any standard, but definitely by commparison to the other. Also, because it had an attached 2mm pad, this saved time. It was one of the reasons we ended up chosing this floor as well. There was very little waste. I bought an extra box because I was sure that we were going to run out, and we ended up with that box and almost another one! So while they said 5% waste on these floors, it had to have been closer to 1%.

It looks great. My husband said that he never saw two identical pieces. It feels nice when you walk on it. It's quiet since it's a 10 mm + 2 mm pad. It's not difficult to clean, and it's much better in quality than the cheap laminate that first came out and is still sold in the store. Laminate has come a very long way in a decade. I also love that LL carries this line all the time, so I know that I could go back in a year and pick up more. That was a huge factor in making this decision as well.

Our sales guy gave us another $0.20 off per sq ft for coming back and buying from them rather than buying the solid hardwood from Floor & Decor. F&D also had a similar product to this one, but you had to buy the pad separately, and by the time you were done with that, it was within a penny per foot in price, so there was not only no reason not to go back to LL, with the pad attached and the courtesy discount, we saved money and time. They have the BEST sales team. We must have been in more than half a dozen times looking and asking questions and getting samples, and they were always so helpful. The quality of the products, both the laminate that has the 2mm pad on the back (like this does) and the engineered hardwood and the solid hardwood is so far above anything else we saw on the market and their prices are extremely competitive. I spent about 5 weeks looking to make this decision. We will be back, and the overall experience both with the products offered, products purchased and customer service was outstanding. No one else even came close in any category. Buy with confidence from LL.

Finished room