This post is for anyone who’s thinking of attempting a DIY install of plank-style vinyl flooring, and also a place to keep my notes so that I can remember how to do it in the future.
Because we have cats and due to the havoc cats will wreak on carpet, we decided about a year and a half ago to switch to vinyl floors. My wife was not into the idea of traditional sheet vinyl because the designs usually aren’t great and the floors often have a “sticky” feeling. My parents had just installed luxury vinyl plank flooring in my mother’s massage studio in their house in San Diego and said that it was relatively cheap and easy to do yourself, so we decided to give it a try.
We spent a couple months looking at brands and designs. First we checked out Lowe’s and the Smartcore brand, which might have been fine, but I wasn’t really in love with the designs and when we ordered a box, a lot of the edges of the planks were broken, so I didn’t have a lot of confidence it would be waterproof enough. Home Depot didn’t really have anything great. We looked at a local store which carried Karndean and considered the loose lay, but I wasn’t sure if it would be waterproof enough just laid side-by-side. We looked at the Karndean click-lock and while I really liked the material, I couldn’t find any styles I was really comfortable with (they all seemed too trendy in either bright colors or washed-out neutrals). It was also pretty expensive at $5 a square foot.
We ordered a couple samples from Cali Bamboo and I thought the Cali Vinyl Plus was too soft and didn’t connect well, but the Cali Vinyl Pro, even though it did connect well and seemed really durable, was too hard and might hurt to walk on. Beaulieu also had some colors we really liked, but when I looked at the installation instructions, it said you couldn’t put heavy furniture on it. That seems like they’re trying to avoid the warranty claims. How are you supposed to know if furniture is “too heavy”? Definitely read the installation instructions before you buy…
We eventually settled on Mohawk Solidtech because I found one of their designs (Mohawk Revelance Sandstorm) that looked enough like “normal” wood to me. I was just looking for a plain flooring that would look natural and blend in with our house, which has maple wood cabinets, beige tile, and medium brown trim. It was surprisingly hard to find flooring in a warm medium brown color that wasn’t distressed or exotic!
Once we chose the product, we ordered enough for all 4 bedrooms from Flooring Liquidators. They had the cheapest price at about $3.50 per square foot, and they shipped to a location near us where we could go pick it up on our own time (though it might have been worth having it delivered, as the boxes slid around a lot in the car and were heavy to unpack ^^;).
After putting the product in the garage, we got started on the room by moving all the furniture out, removing the closet doors, and removing the old carpet, pad, and tack strips. There were lots of staples left over from the carpet, so we spent a lot of time pulling those out with pliers. We got the floor clean (using a paint scraper and shop vac on dirty spots), tested that it was dry with a moisture meter, and tested that it was level enough with a spirit level (as long as the bubble doesn’t pass the lines, it is level enough). Luckily the floor was level enough, otherwise we would have had to use a self-leveling compound to even it out. We did use a little bit of patch for some of the gaps between the planks though (we had a wood plank subfloor, no plywood).
We had planned to either leave the baseboards on or take them off and reattach them after the planks were down, but the baseboards were too high, so the flooring wouldn’t have gone high enough to meet them and it would have left a gap, so we ended up throwing out the baseboards and buying new ones.
The tile in the hallway was also a little too high for the vinyl, so we decided to install 1/4 inch plywood 4×4 boards to bring the floor level up and be a little bit more even. The boards would also help to even out the slightly bumpy wood plank subfloor. We nailed the plywood in with 1″ finish nails 2″ apart around all the edges and 6″ apart in the middle. (We tried getting a compressor and staple gun, but the staples broke through the plywood too often, so we returned them and did it the old fashioned way). It’s best to stagger the joints like bricks for stability. We also left a 1/4″ expansion gap around the edges and 1/8″ expansion gap between the boards.
After the subfloor was laid in, we measured the shortest side of the room (since we wanted to lay the planks longways). We took this measurement to make sure that with the width of the room and the width of the boards there wouldn’t be any horizontal boards less than 4″ (you don’t want a little sliver of a board at the edge). We used this measurement to figure out how thick to cut the first row of boards.
We ripped (cut longways) our boards with a circular saw and the board clamped to a table outside. The flat sides of the boards go towards the wall and the sides with the tongues face towards you as you’re laying them. We also noticed there were small plastic covers on the left ends of some of the boards, so be careful that all packaging is removed before installing!
We laid the boards in according to the instructions, and used a pull bar or tapping block with a hammer to butt the boards together. The idea is to get the boards really tight and even, leaving no gaps. We used a rubber mallet to pound in corners that popped up. We used black spacers from Lowe’s to keep a 1/4″ expansion gap around the edges. We mostly used the score-and-snap method using a cutting board and an X-Acto knife for the short cuts at the end of rows. We staggered the ends of the boards by about 1/3 of the board as we went, but we weren’t too exact, as long as the joint of the current row was at least 6″ off from the prior row.
After about 3 days, we reached the end! I bought a transition strip for the doorway and new polystyrene baseboards from Home Depot because the old ones didn’t match, were too beat up, and weren’t wide enough to cover the expansion gap. My Dad installed the transition strip (thanks Dad!) and much of the baseboards. The baseboards cut a lot like regular wood ones, and we used a plastic jig and a saw to cut 45 degree angles for the corners of the baseboards. On some of the joints we did coping joints, which is when you leave one board with a straight cut to the wall, then cut the other board at a 45 degree angle and use a coping saw to cut along the edge, leaving a more connected finish than two simple 45-degree angle cuts joined together.
We nailed the baseboards in with larger finish nails (I think 1.5″?), enough to sink into the wood at the bottom of the walls (we nailed at the bottom and angled the nails down to catch this wood part at the bottom). We used a nail set to push the nails in past the surface of the baseboards to give a cleaner look.
Then I caulked the baseboards in to make them waterproof, starting with the corners, then the tops, then the bottoms, then the parts around the closet frame. For the corners and bottoms, I used DAP cedar color. For the top, I used DAP almond color to blend with our beige walls (I tested this with old wall paint on a piece of cardboard first to make sure it matched). For the closet casings, I used white to match the paint there.
Be careful when opening caulk to pierce the seal after you cut the tip off! I didn’t realize there was a seal on the inside of the first tube and ended up popping it. 😛 Caulking takes a little bit of practice to get the hang of. I found the best way to do it for me was to caulk with the tip away from me, pulling the gun backwards. I tried the wet finger method of caulk tooling (smoothing + removing excess caulk) but it didn’t work very well for me and took too long. I had much better results using the DAP Cap from Home Depot. It’s nice and sharp and cleans up smears really well. Plus it doesn’t introduce bacteria from your finger into the caulk. I did use my fingers to clean up the edges, though, and scape bits off that were too far away from the line. It’s definitely good to have plenty of water and paper towels on hand, and a grocery bag to set the caulk gun down on.
Caulk guns all have a release lever on the back, so press that as soon as you’re done with a line to get the caulk to stop coming out! A nail inserted into the tip works very well to keep the caulk from drying out before the next application, but it will sometimes leave a little dirt on the next bit of caulk to come out, so let a little come out on a paper towel first before reusing it.
The room is pretty much done now! We just need to put the closet doors back on and move all the stuff from my office in while we start on my office’s floor. 🙂
It took us a pretty long time to do the first room because we were figuring it out as we went, but by the time the second room is done, I should have a better estimate of how long this project should take.
Hope this was useful to you! I know it will be for me because I have the memory of a goldfish.
Have you ever done your own floors before? How did it go?
What color/material/brand of floors are your favorite?
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