Laying parquet on plywood: technology and price per m2

Parquet flooring has been known for many centuries. Installing it until recently was difficult and time-consuming. But new technologies have facilitated this process, and now it is possible to perform it yourself. Let's find out how to lay parquet on plywood and when this method is most preferred to maintain maximum durability of the coating.

Why do you need a plywood base?

Before you start laying parquet, you need to perform a whole range of preparatory work. This type of flooring requires stringent conditions:

• The base must have a height difference of not more than 1-2 mm per meter of surface.
• It is imperative to provide the necessary protection against moisture.
• The moisture content of the base should not exceed 6%.

To fulfill all these conditions will help laying the plywood layer on an old foundation.

Plywood is recommended to be laid in the following cases:

• On leveling screed or concrete floor. A wood slab will facilitate the fastening of parquet dies, will become a barrier to the transfer of moisture from the floor, and also compensate for the difference in thermal expansion of wood and screed material.
• Laying parquet on an old wooden floor. Rarely plank base is in a state close to ideal. Of course, you can carry out a repair cycle in order to achieve the required parameters, but putting sheet material is much easier.
• Sometimes it is advisable to lay plywood directly on the logs. This is the fastest and easiest way to prepare a quality foundation. This method can be used both in new buildings where the floors are completely absent, and with significant wear of the old floor covering, when it is necessary to carry out its complete dismantling.

Using plywood allows you to:

• Level the surface in the shortest possible time and with the least effort.
• Improve the heat and sound insulation properties of the floor covering.
• Protect the parquet from the effects of deformation associated with shrinkage and thermal expansion of the material.
• Ensure reliability of fixation of parquet dice. When fixing them directly to the screed, destruction of its upper layer is possible over time, as a result of which parquet planks will sag and loosen. When using plywood, this will not happen.

Styling preparation

After finishing the preliminary work, you can go directly to parquet installation. Before you lay it, you need to decide on the styling scheme. The most common options are:

• "Herringbone";
• deck method;
• "diagonal";
• "square";
• "network".

Only after drawing up the scheme should one buy material, taking into account the amount of waste that is inevitable when cutting parquet planks. But even with the most careful calculations, it is better to purchase with a margin of at least 5% of the required amount of material.

Stacked plywood before installation of the parquet must be sanded and primed.

Before laying, make sure that the desired microclimate is created in the room: air humidity should be 35–60%, and the temperature should be 17–22 ° С. The residual humidity of the floor and walls should be measured, its parameters should not exceed 5-6%. Failure to comply with these conditions may result in damage to the applied coating. After a rather short period of time, it will dry out or, conversely, swell.

Important! Parquet strips must be matured in the room for at least 2-3 days, so that it adapts to the microclimate of the room.

Installation methods for parquet

By the nature of fixation, the following types of parquet laying are distinguished:

• Floating method.
• Mounting with glue.
• Fastening with nails, brackets or self-tapping screws.
• Combined. It involves the simultaneous use of glue and hardware.

Floating way

Planks of parquet are fixed only among themselves. The strength of the connection provides a system of spikes and grooves on the elements of the parquet.

Pros:

• Such a floor without any consequences can change its linear dimensions under the influence of external factors.
• Parquet is quite simple to repair.

Minuses:

• The strength of the coating is extremely small: violation of one castle connection will lead to the inevitable deformation of the entire floor.
• Mandatory is the use of soundproofing materials in the substrate.

Adhesive mount

A more reliable way to fix the parquet, but it will be more difficult to repair such a coating if necessary.

For work, it is better to choose a two-component polyurethane composition.

The procedure is simple:

• Marks are placed on the floor depending on the chosen laying pattern.
• An adhesive is applied to a small space. It is recommended to use a notched trowel for this purpose.
• The parquet strip is laid on glue and pressed tightly.
• The next row of elements is additionally fixed by means of a spike and a groove. To obtain an even and dense seam, the trims are hammered with a hammer through a wooden plank or bump.

So row by row the whole parquet is laid. The strips are cut according to the selected pattern.

Combined method

The most reliable mounting method. But it is extremely difficult to repair the parquet floor laid in this way.

The operating procedure is almost the same as when laying on glue. The only difference: each bar is additionally fixed with three self-tapping screws or studs. Mounting is carried out through the spike at an angle of 45 °. Thus, after attaching the next element, the fastener locations will be invisible.

A construction gun equipped with studs or staples will greatly simplify and speed up the work. With its help, it is easiest to qualitatively fix the dies on a plywood base.

Using a parquet board

Parquet is an expensive pleasure. Therefore, more recently, cheaper material is gaining more popularity - parquet board. Her trims consist of three parts or layers:

• The top is made of veneer of valuable varieties of wood.
• The middle one consists of coniferous wood; it contains the fixing elements of the spike-groove system.
• The lower part is made of plywood.

Technology for laying adhesive floorboard same as for classic array cover. But the larger size of the elements significantly speeds up and facilitates the process. The schemes for laying a parquet board on a plywood base are the same, most often it is a "herringbone", "deck" and "diagonal".

Parquet finishing

After installation is complete, the coating must be aged for at least a week. This is necessary for the complete hardening of the adhesive composition. After that, skirting boards are nailed, the surface is cycled and ground.

The final stage is the application of varnish or special oil on the parquet.

For a parquet board, as well as a type of parquet, in which the finish layer is already applied at the factory, the grinding and varnishing steps are omitted.

Cost of work

When deciding to entrust the laying of flooring to professionals, you need to be prepared for serious expenses. Estimated price of work in Moscow:

• laying plywood sheets with drilling or glue - 140–250 rubles / m2;
• polishing plywood - 90–150 rubles / m2, primer - 30 rubles / m2;
• Flooring parquet flooring - 300-350 rubles / m2, by gluing - 450-560 rubles / m2, on glue and nails - 450-630 rubles / m2;
• installation of a wooden plinth with a height of 60–100 mm - 180–320 rubles / m2;
• scraping, polishing of parquet, puttying of cracks - 350 rubles / m2.
• priming, varnishing - 60–150 rubles / m2, oil coating - 80–200 rubles / m2.

Prices for similar work in St. Petersburg and the regions may differ both in smaller and larger directions.

Parquet laid on the basis of plywood will please for many years, if you do the work carefully and observe the above rules.