We are installing Tundra in a basement guest room. The floor area is rather large: about 14' by 22' feet (or so). I am installing over vinyl tile, the old floor is flat. Tundra was purchased 60 days ago and stored flat in our basement, 1 room away from final location. (This is a heated basement, with the vents shut... but still fairly dry) We have winter here in PA, but it has rained lately.
Here is what I have done so far:
1) Put down the plastic vapor barrier. carpet tape @leading edge to hold it down
2) Put down the foam padding layer
3) installed about half the floor (starting with the 14' side) I did all of this in one 6 hour stretch. At the end of 6 hours, I came to a board that failed to install (twice) and decided to stop for the evening.
Now we come to the sad part

I am halfway through and suddenly having difficulty getting the boards in place. When I try to snap a board in, the left and right edges have a gap of almost 1 mm. Which means I can choose to have the left or right edges snap in. And of course, I really need both to snap in. One option is lots of banging on the board - something I am not supposed to have to do. (and, this damages the leading edge, causing bigger issues with the next row) I have tried opening a new box, which worked for one or two boards, then back to the same installation issue.
Some details:
* It looks like either the "line" of the floor is slightly out, or the boards in the box are slightly warped. Or I have a single big defect somewhere in the middle of the floor.
* The Ikea plastic installation block has long ago gotten beaten to a pulp, so I am using a hardwood block.
* When I started the installation yesterday, I turned the heat on in the room I am installing in. So the room humidity should have dropped very very slightly. Does anyone (Ikea employee perhaps?) have data on product expansion vs humidity? I really don't think the tiny possible humidity drop should be enough to warp the floor and make installation impossible.
The solutions I can think of:
1) Start installing from the other side of the room - where the 2 floors meet, there will be a very ugly seam. If I do this I will never hear the end of it from my partner, since Ikea flooring was my idea.
2) Click out 4 or 5 rows of floor, to get back to a place where it was going in better. These rows would get scrapped, about $100 worth of product :-(
3) Switch to carpet halfway through the floor. Not a good idea!
Will this product assemble better with low or high humidity???
Is there some trick I am missing?
And for the record, I have
lots of IKEA furniture assembly experience. I have never had a problem like this before!
- C