Lesson's Learned and Mistakes Made Installing Ikea Tundra Flooring

Recently we decided that we would install some click flooring instead of laying down new carpet. We did some research and almost had some click flooring professionally installed, but decided to save money and look into doing it ourselves.

We are not DIY people. None of us have any kind of carpentry skills and our previous history of DIY tasks hasn't always yielded the best result. Our aptitude for DIY is about as good as our heart surgery skills.

I watched a few YouTube videos and read some blog posts that preached how easy it is to install click flooring. I was convinced right from the start this would be the easiest DIY job I would do in our house, or so I thought.

• Easy to install
• Great project for inexperienced DIY'ers
• Minimal tools required
• A fun rewarding first project

Why Ikea Tundra?

We sized up a few options and by far, Ikea has the nicest looking click flooring at this price point. A box of planks will set you back $35.80 AUD for 2.39 m² of flooring, which works out to be $15 AUD per square metre.

Considering other types of click flooring that look as nice start around $26 AUD per square metre, it's hard to argue with the price.

Being a DIY project, we didn't want to spend a lot of money on a project that might not turn out (given our history with DIY projects). Knowing that the tongue and groove style connector results in some breakage, it makes sense.

This is probably the reason a lot of DIY'ers default to Ikea's flooring, if you mess up and destroy a few planks, you didn't just waste hundreds of dollars.

Click flooring is "easy"

Everything we read before we took the DIY plunge boasted how easy and rewarding it was to install click flooring yourself, that click flooring is great for people who aren't good DIY'ers. On paper, this sounds great. Finally, a DIY project that will add value to the house, look great and be easy as turning on a light switch, or so we thought.

Maybe some people just have a natural aptitude for click flooring, but in our case, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. It was an exercise in frustration, highs and lows were had during the installation of our Ikea Tundra click flooring.

Or perhaps people are too proud to admit they didn't quite master this supposedly easy to install type of flooring because they see everyone else online saying how easy it is and they don't want to look incompetent.

The complexity lays in Ikea's approach to how pieces connect: tongue and groove. You angle the pieces and then snap/click them together. In theory, this sounds great, but in practice, there are far too many variables that can ruin the experience.

Tundra is cheap for a reason

There is a reason that Ikea's Tundra flooring is cheap because it isn't exactly the most stable or highest build quality (you get what you pay for). Our first foray was three boxes, every box had quite a few defective pieces in it. By defective I mean the joins had chips or pieces missing from them.

You will read about this or hear it mentioned in Youtube videos, but if so much as the tiniest piece on the joins (tongue or groove) is missing, the pieces will not click together properly. You can salvage some pieces, but at times the damage can be on both ends and at that point, you just have to throw it out.

What surprises me is the joining parts of the Tundra flooring seem like some kind of cardboard composite, the smallest bit of pressure can break the fragile tongue especially.

Buy a drop saw, seriously

Ikea sells a handsaw for their installation kit, many YouTubers use a Circular Saw (some were using a Jigsaw) and I am telling you that you absolutely need a drop saw (or Mitre Saw) to make clean cuts.

The first room we did was done with a Circular Saw and the thing about Circular Saws is: they're hard to control. Unless you have a fancy one that can keep it completely straight, they're hard to measure for (because you have to measure for blade offset) and the blade does a rip style cut (so the edges are not clean).

The beautiful thing about a drop saw is you measure twice, and then position your plank and cut in one motion. Stay clear of the cheap store-brand saws like Ozito or even Ryobi, go for something like a DeWalt or Makita saw to get a proper cut.

When it comes to cuts, you absolutely want the pieces to sit flush against the wall and one another, a circular saw will give you a messy rip-style cut that will require manual sanding to smoothen out or you could end up with pieces not sitting flush and you'll have gaps.

We wish that we purchased a drop saw right from the beginning, but that's how you learn. And we made the mistake so you can learn from it if you go down this path as well.

The pieces don't always fit

This is the frustrating part. Sometimes a chip or speck of debris will stop the pieces cleanly clicking together, other times you might have a defective piece which will never click in properly because it's warped.

Even if a piece looks okay, it's not guaranteed to be defect free. Ikea's Tundra click flooring is so volatile. Even if the join is bent slightly, it won't connect properly. Given the soft malleable nature of the connecting parts of the planks, understandably during the production process, you get a medium error rate.

Once again, you get what you pay for. At half the price of a more professional grade click flooring, beggars can't be choosers. Still, for a paid product it's annoying.

Worth pointing out if you keep getting defective planks, Ikea will give you a refund or new box of flooring planks if you have a heap of them like we did.

The pieces click both ways

The Ikea instructions are disturbingly unhelpful. Connecting the pieces vertically was not a problem, but for a while, we struggled to connect them horizontally (going across the plank, not up).

Maybe due to inexperience, but it wasn't immediately apparent that the pieces click together both vertically and horizontally. So we were struggling to connect pieces horizontally for a long time, suffering from gaps and pieces popping out.

The instructions were not exactly clear on this. It took a YouTube video where someone was installing the flooring to demonstrate how the pieces join both ways and the order that it has to be done in (horizontal first and then vertical).

Go from left to right

For easier installation, go from the left side of the room to the right. It makes connecting the pieces together so much easier and results in a nicer looking job when you're finished. You can go from right to left as well if you want, but it seems to be the recommended best practice to go from the left.

Watch out for non-straight walls

This was beyond frustrating. We got halfway through our son's room and noticed the pieces were shifting to one side, kind of like they were bent. We then proceeded to unclick every piece and go back to the starting wall and re-click them together.

In doing so, we made a startling discovery: the wall we started on wasn't straight. We didn't want to cut into the skirting boards, so what we did was get some bigger spaces 10mm ones instead of the 8mm and push the wall out a bit more.

In our case, the house is old (from the 70's) so it's most likely a result of the age of the house or how it was constructed (or the wood changing over time). Who knows, but this gotcha set us back a bit in time.

Not once did a Youtuber or anyone else raise a non-straight wall as a potential issue when installing click flooring. Check your room is square before you begin or you'll be subjecting yourself to unnecessary pain.

Cut under the door jamb

This was the part that we were dreading: the door jamb. There are two schools of thought on this, you either cut the door jamb or you cut the click flooring itself using a Jigsaw or table saw.

We considered both options and decided to cut under the door jamb instead. Although the thought of cutting a solid wood door jamb is frightening, it was the easiest part of the process.

To do this, you can use a handsaw or for an easier result: buy a multi-tool with a cutting blade specifically for the type of wood you're cutting into (most likely hardwood). Rest the piece against the jamb with the underlay to get the height and then cut above it.

If you have an older house, make sure that there are no electric cables in the door jamb area. Apparently, in older houses, they would stuff electrical cabling almost anywhere and the door frames and jambs were a place where they sometimes would stuff them.

Conclusion

Be wary of claims that click flooring is one of the easiest DIY jobs you can do. I honestly find prepping and painting walls to be a lot easier than the experience of putting down click flooring.

Overall it took me 4 weekends (a month) to complete this small room. But now I am more experienced I am confident if I did it again, I could get it done in one whole weekend. Do I want to do it again? Heck no. We're paying a professional to do the rest of the house for us.