Top 10 Challenges to Installing a Laminate Floor

It was only 300-square-feet. But it took a month ...

10. A Thunderbird does not necessarily have the same load capacity as a pick-up. (You really find this out when you attempt to bring home groceries, household supplies and 14 boxes of laminate flooring and all its accessories simultaneously. Your vehicle rapidly begins to take on a certain Beverly Hillbillies quality, with only Granny missing from the rooftop.)
9. Floor preparation. (This task is really a challenge when the idiots who previously owned your home thought that applying both vinyl tile and parquet to the existing hardwoods was a good idea. Actually, to clarify, removing the tile and the parquet was easy. Removing the tile adhesive and the mortar from beneath the parquet -- not so much.)
8. Furniture removal. (My most excellent friend Chele said it best: a mansion's worth of furniture in two rooms. And two rooms that are smaller than one room to most people.)
7. Big, bulky furniture. (Some things just can't be moved -- at least not by me or not very far -- so you have to work around them.)
6. Where is …? (Between areas you can't walk on and areas you wouldn't dare go to because of the harried effort to find a temporary spot for everything, you can't find ANYTHING including tools, keys, and occasionally, the dog.)
5. Dyslexic sawing. (You realize that you should have cut FROM THE OTHER END just as said other end hits the ground.)
4. Surprise guests. (At a house visitors rarely come to, people suddenly materialize in a steady stream -- at a time when number 7 is blocking the front door.)
3. Eight feet of interference. (Four each belonging to Toby and Ozzie. Those feet stop right where you are working, stand on the boards you are installing and sometimes even bring water, food and cat litter along to track onto the new floor.)
2. Staples, staples, staples. (Not the store, the 200 or so staples that the carpet installers thought it would be a good idea to use per square foot. These buggers also make carpet removal -- which should be a fairly easy job -- nearly impossible.)
1. The flooring manufacturer. (Once you finally overcome most of the other obstacles and begin making progress, you find that the flooring manufacturer has at some point switched to a different locking system. This wouldn't be a problem -- if the two systems worked together. Alas, they do not. Of three remaining boxes, two contain such boards that, while they will lock tightly to each other, will not lock to the already installed pieces from the other system.