How to Install Luxury Vinyl Plank Floor

Get a dandy-looking new floor in one 24-hour interval

Time

A full day

Complexity

Intermediate

Cost

$101–250

Introduction

Luxury vinyl (LV) is tough and skillful-looking—and the easiest floor textile yous'll always install. These tips and tricks volition help you get the chore done right.

Tools Required

Luxury vinyl flooring (LVP) is like to sheet vinyl, but it's thicker, more durable and easier to install. It comes in tiles and planks, but this article covers planks only, and uses a production called Adura LockSolid. It'southward a floating floor which means information technology isn't fastened to the subfloor—information technology merely lies there.

Luxury vinyl is the fastest-growing category in the flooring industry. LVP starts at nearly a couple of dollars per square foot, similar in price to medium-grade laminate. Information technology's available at flooring stores and home centers.

ⓘ

Project stride-by-step (9)

Footstep 1

Sand Down the High Spots

  • Discover the loftier and depression spots on woods subfloors with a straightedge.
    • Notation: The floor height should not ascension or drib more 1/8 inch over the span of iv feet.
  • Sand downwards the high spots with a belt sander equipped with a fibroid-dust belt.
    • Annotation: This is a dusty job, and so turn off your furnace to avert spreading dust all over the house, and clothing a grit mask.
    • Pro tip: Use the coarsest sanding belt you can find, such as 40- or 60-dust.

Step ii

Make full in the Low Spots

  • Fill the depression spots with floor patch, and feather it out with a trowel.
    • Pro tip: Avoid self-leveling floor patch. The floor doesn't have to exist level; information technology just has to be smooth.

Brainstorm and Terminate with Half a Plank or More than

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

Measure the width of the room, and divide information technology by the width of the exposed portion of the plank earlier yous start installing vinyl plank flooring. For example, if your room measures 123 in., and your flooring is five.75 in. wide, you'd divide 123 by 5.75, which is 21.39. That is, it would have 21.39 planks to consummate the flooring. Considering this .39 represents less than half the width of a plank, you would want to cutting downwardly the beginning plank by an inch or so to increase the size of the last plank.

Pace 3

Undercut Doorjambs

  • Trim jambs and casing then y'all can slide the flooring underneath.
    • Pro tip: An aquiver multi-tool works bully. Utilize a small-scale scrap of flooring as a guide.

Step 4

Leave an Expansion Gap Along the Walls

  • Insert shims to create virtually a one/4-inch to 3/8-inch gap betwixt the floor and the walls.
    • Notation: These gaps allow the floor to aggrandize freely with temperature changes.

Step 5

Snap the Planks Together

  • Snap the planks in the first row together end to end.
  • Slide the tongue of the get-go plank on the second row into the groove of the first row at a depression angle and lay information technology on the flooring.
  • Install the second and subsequent planks in each row by locking the ends together, and so you work your mode down the plank, pushing the tongue into the groove equally you go.
    • Pro tip: It helps to twist and bend each plank into place.

Watch Your Flooring Summit

New floor raises or lowers the final height of the flooring, which tin create unexpected problems. Hither are some things to go on in mind:

Jambs
If you lot're pulling out old flooring that is thicker than your new stuff, y'all'll end upward with gaps under the doorjambs. To forbid that, you could cover the subfloor with a layer of one/iv-inch underlayment to raise the height of the entire floor.

Dishwasher
In well-nigh cases, there's enough space to a higher place the dishwasher so that yous can raise the floor level a little and however reinstall the dishwasher. Simply check the gap betwixt the top of the dishwasher and the countertop commencement only to be sure.

Stairs
Be careful when irresolute floor that butts up to a flight of stairs. Building codes allow no more than a 3/viii-inch difference betwixt the heights of the lowest and tallest stair risers. Changing the flooring height at the top or bottom of stairs will change riser heights and could create a trip risk.

Existing sheet vinyl and carpet
If your kitchen floor is sheet vinyl and the dining room is rug, don't forget that the canvass vinyl volition have a 1/4-inch underlayment beneath it, just the carpet 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.

Step six

Stagger the Seams

  • Stagger the seams at least vi inches, and don't start or end any row with a plank less than 6 inches broad.
    • Pro tip: Open several boxes at one time and mix them up to ensure a varied pattern.

Stride 7

Tap in the Finish Planks

  • Hook the pull bar onto the end of the piece, and tap stubborn seams closed.

Stride 8

Install Bridge Molding

  • Encompass the expansion gap between the flooring and the base trim.
    • Pro tip: Don't blast 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's easier to piece of work away from door openings than into them, but sometimes that's non an option. When working parallel to a door, make sure the seam on the row that intersects the jamb lands within the door opening. Mark and cutting the beginning plank, then tap it into place using a scrap of flooring and a borer block.

Curve the second plank into place
Mark and cut the 2nd plank to fit, and then slide it under the jamb. Curve information technology up in the eye so you can lock it into place. This is another state of affairs where the flexibility of this product comes in handy. The larger this 2nd plank is, the easier it is to work with.

Around the Doorjambs: Planks Perpendicular to Openings

Tap the first plank under the jamb
Sometimes you'll accept to cut around jambs while laying the planks perpendicular to a door opening. This is like shooting fish in a barrel if the door opening falls on the same side every bit you started your rows. Simply marker and cut the first plank to size and tap information technology under the jamb with a tapping block.

Tap the end plank in sideways
Information technology's trickier to work around a jamb when the door opening is located at the end of the rows. One solution is to mark and cut the end plank to size, and tap it in along the stop groove of the previous plank. You may not be able to lock it into place without removing the bottom lip on the plank you're snapping information technology into. If you remove more than 6 in. of the lip, apply seam sealer to glue the planks together. Buy a bottle of seam sealer for nigh ten dollars from your floor supplier.

Stride 9

Install Shoe Molding

  • Once your flooring is downward, install shoe molding to cover the expansion gap between the floor and the base of operations trim.
  • Shoot 1-i/four-inch finish nails through the shoe and into the base trim.
    • Pro tip: Be careful not to pivot the floor down in the process. Terminate the molding to match the trim, not the flooring.

Originally Published: September 23, 2020