How to Install Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring

Go a great-looking new floor in one day

Time

A total twenty-four hours

Complexity

Intermediate

Cost

$101–250

Introduction

Luxury vinyl (LV) is tough and expert-looking—and the easiest flooring material yous'll ever install. These tips and tricks volition help you get the task done right.

Tools Required

Luxury vinyl flooring (LVP) is similar to sail vinyl, but it's thicker, more durable and easier to install. It comes in tiles and planks, just this commodity covers planks merely, and uses a product called Adura LockSolid. It's a floating flooring which ways it isn't fastened to the subfloor—it just lies there.

Luxury vinyl is the fastest-growing category in the flooring industry. LVP starts at most a couple of dollars per square foot, like in price to medium-grade laminate. It'south available at flooring stores and domicile centers.

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Project step-by-step (9)

Step 1

Sand Down the High Spots

  • Find the high and low spots on forest subfloors with a straightedge.
    • Annotation: The floor height should not rise or drib more than one/viii inch over the bridge of iv feet.
  • Sand down the high spots with a chugalug sander equipped with a coarse-grit belt.
    • Note: This is a dusty job, then turn off your furnace to avoid spreading dust all over the house, and wear a dust mask.
    • Pro tip: Utilise the coarsest sanding belt you can find, such as 40- or sixty-dust.

Step 2

Fill in the Low Spots

  • Fill the depression spots with floor patch, and plumage it out with a trowel.
    • Pro tip: Avoid cocky-leveling floor patch. The floor doesn't accept to exist level; it just has to be polish.

Begin and Terminate with One-half a Plank or More

If yous lay the planks parallel to the longest wall as y'all're installing vinyl plank flooring, you'll stop upwards making fewer cuts. But don't starting time that first row with total planks without figuring out how wide your last row is going to be. Neither the first nor the final row should be ripped down much smaller than half a plank.

Measure the width of the room, and divide it by the width of the exposed portion of the plank before yous offset installing vinyl plank flooring. For instance, if your room measures 123 in., and your flooring is five.75 in. broad, you'd divide 123 by 5.75, which is 21.39. That is, it would accept 21.39 planks to complete the floor. Because this .39 represents less than one-half the width of a plank, you would desire to cut down the first plank by an inch or so to increase the size of the last plank.

Step iii

Undercut Doorjambs

  • Trim jambs and casing so you can slide the flooring underneath.
    • Pro tip: An oscillating multi-tool works great. Apply a pocket-sized fleck of flooring as a guide.

Step 4

Leave an Expansion Gap Along the Walls

  • Insert shims to create about a i/4-inch to 3/8-inch gap between the flooring and the walls.
    • Note: These gaps allow the floor to expand freely with temperature changes.

Step 5

Snap the Planks Together

  • Snap the planks in the first row together end to cease.
  • Slide the tongue of the first plank on the second row into the groove of the first row at a low angle and lay information technology on the floor.
  • Install the 2d and subsequent planks in each row by locking the ends together, and then you piece of work your way downwards the plank, pushing the natural language into the groove as y'all go.
    • Pro tip: It helps to twist and bend each plank into place.

Watch Your Floor Height

New flooring raises or lowers the final height of the floor, which can create unexpected problems. Here are some things to go along in listen:

Jambs
If you lot're pulling out erstwhile floor that is thicker than your new stuff, you lot'll end up with gaps under the doorjambs. To prevent that, you could cover the subfloor with a layer of 1/4-inch underlayment to raise the height of the entire flooring.

Dishwasher
In most cases, at that place'due south enough space higher up the dishwasher so that you tin raise the flooring level a footling and still reinstall the dishwasher. Just check the gap between the top of the dishwasher and the countertop first just to exist sure.

Stairs
Be careful when changing floor that butts upwards to a flight of stairs. Edifice codes allow no more than than a 3/viii-inch difference between the heights of the lowest and tallest stair risers. Changing the floor meridian at the top or bottom of stairs will alter riser heights and could create a trip risk.

Existing sheet vinyl and carpet
If your kitchen floor is sail vinyl and the dining room is carpeting, don't forget that the sheet vinyl will have a ane/iv-inch underlayment beneath information technology, only the carpeting won't. If you lot desire to install LV flooring in both, you'll have to remove the underlayment in the kitchen or add some to the dining room.

Footstep half-dozen

Stagger the Seams

  • Stagger the seams at least half-dozen inches, and don't commencement or terminate whatever row with a plank less than 6 inches wide.
    • Pro tip: Open several boxes at once and mix them upwardly to ensure a varied pattern.

Footstep vii

Tap in the Terminate Planks

  • Hook the pull bar onto the stop of the slice, and tap stubborn seams airtight.

Pace eight

Install Bridge Molding

  • Cover the expansion gap between the flooring and the base trim.
    • Pro tip: Don't smash into the flooring—that will prevent the floor from expanding freely.

Around the Doorjambs: Planks Parallel to Openings

Land the seam in the door opening
It'southward easier to work away from door openings than into them, just sometimes that'south not an choice. When working parallel to a door, brand sure the seam on the row that intersects the jamb lands inside the door opening. Marker and cut the outset plank, then tap it into place using a fleck of flooring and a borer block.

Curve the second plank into place
Mark and cut the second plank to fit, so slide information technology under the jamb. Bend it upwardly in the middle and so y'all can lock it into identify. This is another situation where the flexibility of this production comes in handy. The larger this second plank is, the easier it is to work with.

Around the Doorjambs: Planks Perpendicular to Openings

Tap the showtime plank under the jamb
Sometimes yous'll accept to cutting effectually jambs while laying the planks perpendicular to a door opening. This is easy if the door opening falls on the same side as you started your rows. Merely mark and cut the first plank to size and tap it nether the jamb with a tapping block.

Tap the stop plank in sideways
It'southward trickier to work around a jamb when the door opening is located at the terminate of the rows. 1 solution is to marker and cut the cease plank to size, and tap it in along the stop groove of the previous plank. You may not be able to lock information technology into identify without removing the bottom lip on the plank you're snapping it into. If you remove more than vi in. of the lip, use seam sealer to mucilage the planks together. Buy a bottle of seam sealer for about ten dollars from your flooring supplier.

Step nine

Install Shoe Molding

  • Once your flooring is downwardly, install shoe molding to cover the expansion gap between the flooring and the base of operations trim.
  • Shoot 1-1/four-inch finish nails through the shoe and into the base of operations trim.
    • Pro tip: Exist conscientious non to pin the flooring downwards in the process. Finish the molding to match the trim, not the flooring.

Originally Published: September 23, 2020