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I am laying laminate flooring in a room and unfortunately my calculations were off and I am left with expansion gaps of about 2.5cm to 4.5cm (0.97in to 1.77in) along one wall (see picture).

Is there any recommended way to fill this in so that my baseboards can be installed?

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    Rip pieces of the flooring and slip them in. Do you have some left over?
    – Jim Stewart
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 11:43
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    Hello, and welcome to Stack Exchange. My guess is that if you support these strips reasonably well they'll be fine, as nobody steps on that area of the floor.
    – Daniel Griscom
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 13:51
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    I mean something that isn't easily compressible; wood, or perhaps hard foam. Something that, if you pressed down with your fingers, the strips wouldn't rock back and forth.
    – Daniel Griscom
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 16:02
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    I assume that in a floating floor there is supposed to be a gap between the edge of the floor and the wall (~1/4" to 1/2" ?) that would be covered by the baseboard and shoe molding. What do the installation instructions for this flooring say?
    – Jim Stewart
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 19:18
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    One detail of installation that I can imagine (never having installed one of these floors myself) could be that in case of a gap larger than could be covered by baseboard, the narrow strip needed would be glued to the adjacent full strip and temporary blocks wedged in the gap to hold the strip while the glue dries. Of course, if the planks in your floor are all glued to each other, you would naturally do this. Are they glued?
    – Jim Stewart
    Commented Dec 12, 2018 at 12:07

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I ended up ripping the laminate boards lengthwise using my jigsaw and fitting them in like Jim suggested. I used some cardboard to cut out the shape that the long pieces should be and then drew across the edge of the cardboard piece on the laminate boards. It worked out quite well I think and I hope there won’t be any structural support issues.

The expansion gap between the wall and laminate boards is now a lot smaller.

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This is a floating floor, when you rip the pieces and install them they will be partly covered by the mouldings. This is the normal way to install this type of flooring.

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