The flooring Top Tip's section

Welcome to the FittingLaminateFloors.com website.
FittingLaminateFloors have over 25 years experience in the sale , advice and installation of laminate , timber and floating floors. Our goal has always to install and sell flooring of the highest quality. More and more of our clustomers, now embark on installing their own flooring, and rather than just have a FAQ section on our commercial website, we thought, lets go one better and dedicate an entire website to the installation of wood, timber, laminate and floating floors.

Whether it is your first time installing a floating floor, or your an old pro, use our website as a reference. The information in here should save you hours of mispent time, and help you achieve the finish the professionals get.

Within this website you will find out more about the people behind FittingLaminateFloors.com and see examples of our work.

Flooring Room Designers

• Armstrong Flooring Design a Room - view your favorite vinyl, laminate, or wood floors in many different interior room settings. Use your own interior room and be your own room designer!
• Armstrong Anderson Floors Design Center - view your favorite Anderson hardwood species and colors in a variety of room settings.
• Bruce Hardwood's Select A Floor - if you are puzzled by wood floors check out the Bruce Hardwood Select A Wood Floor.
• Congoleum's RoomVision - Whether you are remodeling, redecorating or planning a new home, our interactive design tool helps you take the guesswork out of selecting the right Congoleum vinyl floor. You can even upload your own digital photos too!
• Crossville Porcelain Stone's Cross Vision - Decisions, decisions, decisions...our Cross-Vision Product Visualization System helps making tile decisions even easier because it allows you to build your dream room before your very eyes.
• Dal Tile's Design a Room - decorate any room with ceramic tile or natural stones with Dal Tile.
• Invista Stainmaster Carpet Selector - choose from several room settings and then decorate the room with Invista's Stainmaster Carpet Selector.
• Florida Tile's Virtual Design Center - select a room, pattern and color and see how Florida Tile's ceramic tiles can enhance your decor.
• Harris-Tarkett's Palette of Ideas - select a room and hardwood flooring color to enhance any room decor.
• Mirage Dreamer, your personal design assistant - Mirage Dreamer, your personal floor design assistant that brings design ideas into life in real-time.
• Mannington's Virtual Decorator - design your room with Mannington's wood, vinyl, or laminate floors.
• Mannington's Commercial's DesignLine - with these virtual tools you can choose standard designs or create your own in an instant!
• Mullican Flooring - select a room setting and wood species to view a Mullican wood floor in that room interior.
• NWFA's Design-A-Room - Compare and contrast different wood flooring colors, species and patterns in a variety of room settings in the Interactive Design Studio from the National Wood Flooring Association.
• Pergo's eShowroom - select a room, a wall color, a cabinet color and a floor color and see how a Pergo laminate floor can enhance your home decor.
• Springs Virtual Decorator - Click on the room style of your choice to start decorating with Bali Cellular Shades, Wood Blinds, or Vertical Blinds. Other Bali products are coming soon to our Virtual Decorator.
• BobVila's Kitchen Room Designer - use Bob Villa's Kitchen Room Designer to build your dream kitchen, and then take a photo-realistic tour in 3D.
• Home Depot's Kitchen & Bath Design Center - Change the wall color, cabinet style, flooring, appliances and more with a click of your mouse.
• Lowe's Design Tools - Lowe's web site offers a wide array of interactive planners and design tools for home owners.
• Personal Color Viewer - Benjamin Moore can help you quickly find the right paint color for any room with their virtual room paint color viewer.

Flooring Software

Bid Tech, Inc. - offers a unique competitive advantage to all sectors of the flooring industry. The Bid Tech ‘Plus' Estimating System minimizes the learning curve - anyone on your staff can learn to use within a short training period! The Plus delivers cutting edge computing performance with dynamic speed; increased accuracy by measuring with the DISTO laser meter or GTCO digitizer and completeness by delivering a total bid price. Use the Bids Stone & Tile Program to design-build your very own floor pattern or wall tile layout. Color-code different flooring materials with the layering option in Bid Tech Lite / EG and have your floor plans c/w seaming diagramsdisplayed on-screen.

Callidus Planning Software Systems - Callidus...the world's leading system for commercial flooring installation with several hundred installations across the world saving our clients time and money on a daily basis. Callidus takes information from scale drawings, site measurements, AutoCAD and scanned drawings to calculate all the information you require for flooring installations.

CDMS, Inc. - CDMS INC. The Carpet Dealer Management System will put all your business information at your finger tips. CDMS was designed specifically for the floorcovering industry.

Chadwick & Associates Management Systems - (CAMS) a comprehensive software solution available for floor covering manufacturers and distributors. From the manufacturing floor to the front office, the CAMS system provides the critical tools for you and your staff to plan, manage, report and grow! The CAMS system was created and is supported by Chadwick and Associates, a leading provider of successful solutions for the floor covering industry for over 20 years.

Comp-U-Net - has been designed to be a full Internet services provider for the floor covering industry. With over nineteen years of experience writing software for the Floor Covering Industry. By providing top quality Web site design and customized graphics, Comp-U-Net is now able to give your company the tools it needs to expand it's area of doing business.

CRW Systems - The CRW Flooring System was built for retailing flooring. The system enables the user to easily provide quotes, updates to customer orders, purchase material from suppliers and install - all with their own costs and selling prices.

Dancik-On-Disk International, Ltd. - is a leader in software development of business and Internet solutions to the floor covering, ceramic tile, natural stone and building products industries. Software provider for sophisticated distribution channel management solutions for the distributors, manufacturers, importers, and retailers in our specialized markets.

Eclipse, Inc. - Eclipse Distribution Software is designed for hardgoods distributors. Eclipse is software written in the 90s to take full advantage of the latest technologies available.

Floor Estimator - FloorEstimator 4.0 (by SIGMA MICRO SYSTEM, INC.) is an indispensable tool for effectively estimating flooring projects in a cost effective and time saving manner. It is designed to handle any project from simple to complex with accuracy and speed. This user friendly software has been implemented with the help of floor covering sales people to ensure its ease of use.

Floor Covering Soft - FloorEstimate Pro is a software productivity tool for floor covering professionals, especially for floor retailers, installers, field sales reps and contractors. A sales rep simply layouts a floor plan and FloorEstimate Pro automatically computes in a second the linear material length required and layouts the way how material is cut to eliminate unnecessary waste. Materials can be carpet, vinyl, tile, hardwood with various material width. FloorEstimate Pro saves time, minimizes material waste, shortens the quotation process to customers. And the bottom line, it helps you be more effective in providing better service to your customers.

Focus Floor Covering Software - Here you will find information on software products and services we offer to the flooring industry. Our main product, Focus, is a simple, yet powerful Microsoft Windows based business management and accounting package designed specifically for flooring retailers and contractors.

FloorSoft, Inc. - is a leader in inventory utililization software for the Floor Covering Industry. Our optimization routines have been perfected over 25 years of daily use throughout the industry. FloorSoft solutions are deployed worldwide across a variety of operating systems and hardware platforms. FloorSoft currently employs talented developers with expertise in COBOL, RPG, Java, Visual Basic, HTML, and JavaScript.

Flooring Technologies, Inc. - (See also QFloors ) The user-friendly software designed to help efficiently manage small to mid-size retail flooring companies. Fully integrated, it organizes, records, and administers inventory, sales, accounting, ordering, payroll, scheduling, and other operations.

FloorsNOW Technology Corporation - is the first E-Commerce Application Service Provider to enable the North American floor covering industry with advanced XML architected e-business applications.

Gartman Systems - provides custom programming, consulting services, and software for users of IBM midrange computer systems (System/3X and AS/400). Our services are now used by diverse industries including distribution, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and medical.

NIVBEN Software, Inc. - Introducing a new Microsoft Windows version of "PROFESSIONAL 2020 ESTIMATING PROGRAM". A new tool has been developed by Nivben Software Inc. to save your company time and money. An estimating program that can handle carpet, sheet goods, tile, ceramic tile and hardwood. For the novice operator, the ease of operation will astound you.

Pacific Solutions - specializes in the development and sale of state of the art software for the flooring industry utilizing both the Microsoft's Windows and Macintosh platforms. Our products include Retail Floor Manager, Contract Floor Manager and FloorRight estimation software. Pacific Solutions also offers custom database development. Product training is available both on site and through classroom conferences throughout the year.

On Center Software - On Center Software specializes in providing estimating software to the construction industry. Our software is not only extremely powerful, but easy enough to use for even a novice computer user. Whether you are looking for innovative takeoff tools, powerful estimating products with easy-to-use project management or the "state of the art" in online services--you've come to the right place!

RFMS - ( Resource and Financial Management Systems, Inc. ) is recognized in the flooring industry as the leader in business software for flooring retailers. RFMS has solutions for estimating, B2B and a single/multi-user floor covering management system.

Systems Designs, Inc. - (Prism) We are a leading provider of software and technical services for the wholesale distribution industry. As a business assistance company, our professional staff specializes in tools, technology, and support for progressive distributors who are interested in increasing their profits.

SystemsNet, Inc. - (Floors For Windows™) is a business software developer specializing in products designed for the flooring industry. Our systems are available for Windows '95™, '98™, and Windows NT™ platforms as well as DOS, UNIX and IBM-AIX operating systems.

Textile Management Systems - ( TMS ) creates the Roll Master Floor Covering Software System . Roll-Master is currently available in versions which will run in MSDOS®, Windows®, Windows 95®, Novell®, Lantastic®, Unix®, Xenix® and over 500 other operating systems. Roll-Master is modular in design, providing real-time data interactivity.

VenCom Technologies, Inc - VenCom EDI is an Internet based B2B software product which allows dealers to download data directly from major vendor websites into their in-house database and/or accounting systems. The data includes each dealers' product catalog, pricing, electronic invoices and ship notices. Automated Purchasing is expected become operational during the second quarter of 2001.

Shopping for Flooring

• Before making a trip to your local flooring store:
  • Draw a simple outline of the room(s) and where the room entrances are located.
  • Carefully measure the room(s) you want to cover with new flooring. Use a metal measuring tape and write down both the width and length of the room(s). Be sure to include cupboards and recesses and any other areas that will need flooring.
  • Make a note of what are the adjoining rooms and what flooring is currently in those areas, make notes of flooring heights in these other rooms ( i.e. linolyeum in kitchen 3mm higher than subfloor )
  • Make a note about how much natural sunlight enters the room, which direction the room faces, and any sliding patio doors.
  • If possible, make a note of what is under the existing flooring? (Sometimes if you have an forced-air heating system with in-floor heating ducts you can pull up the heat vent cover and look inside to get an idea as to what is really underneath your existing flooring.)
• Whenever possible take along any furniture, wallpaper, and drapery fabrics from the room(s).
• Decide what you want done with existing baseboard and moldings.
• Think about answers to these questions to help you select the right floor for your needs:
  • How much traffic does this room get each day?
  • What is the room used for?
  • How many children and pets do you have?
  • Do you have a certain color in mind?
  • What are your personal expectations for the flooring? How long do you want it to last?
  • NOTE: 9/10 laminate flooring clients also redecorate and/or change a major item of furniture
• Be sure to ask if the price quoted includes:
  • all subfloor preparation
  • all installation costs
  • removal of existing flooring and discarding, if needed
  • moving of all furniture and appliances
  • all necessary materials for installing your new floor.
  • removal , planing of doors, and re installation
• Ask about the installers:
  • Are they independent flooring installers, or do they work for the store?
  • Ask who's insurance covers installation errors?
  • Ask if all the installation materials are the manufacturer's recommended products, so the warranty will not be voided.
• Before choosing a floor have the salesperson review with you the manufacturer's warranty information as well as the manufacturer's care and maintenance procedures. Keep a copy of both brochures for your reference.
• Be sure to get all quotes in writing, including amount of flooring needed, and a rough diagram of how they will install the flooring and where all seams will fall.
• Be sure to understand who is responsible for removing toilets, portable dishwashers, washing machines and any other fixed room fixtures.
• If the flooring store has a web site, you may want to checkout their web site to give you some idea of what kind of store they are. Make a note about what groups, or organizations they may be associated with. You might even try to set up an appointment with them, via e-mail, to save you valuable time when you get to their store.
• Always get all product information in writing including the manufacturer's name, product name, style, color, and how the product will be installed. Together with full warranty information on the product and fitting guarantees where applicable.
• Don't forget to ask what are some of the extras customers have had to PAY for when having the store install their products, where possible correspond via email. This way you may have recourse when "the supplier" tries to charge you addittional monies for works, not expected.