I just finished installing 1500' of the Chateau Lucerne (dark gray). I have only 2 bedrooms to go if anyone is interested in the tips I found while installing. This stuff looks great. The planks are 6' x 9 3/4" with a lot of color variation. The planks are hard to crosscut with a 60tooth saw blade because the material is almost like rock. It can be picky to lock since the tongue is only about 1/8" to lock into the groove. The first row can cause rows 3-4 to not lock if you don't have enough spacers on the wall and make sure the first couple of rows are locked tight. Because since the tongue is so shallow just 16ths of an inch row by row will throw you off. It's very important to install Right to Left to lock together correctly. Be careful not to damage the tongue/lip since they can break off easily when you move them around if you hit the corners on walls or floors. It helps greatly to have several plate weights on the first row and then move them down with you as you go to keep everything flat. As for waterproof, I took a cut piece and placed it in a bowl of water overnight. The bottom sound layer is some kind of compressed cardboard and it did absorb water but I could not see any indication that it swelled at all. The rest is totally waterproof...again kind of like rock. We absolutely love the look, feel and after the first day of frustration with the above things I mentioned it went smoothly.
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Install notes
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