Last year we had our downstairs remodeled , obviously got the professionals in for that. Now we want to tidy up the upstairs, which, other than a bathroom that needs a real work over, which I will not to, will mostly involve painting walls and skirting/base boards and doors , changing some ceiling fans and door hardware. The big one is the carpets need to come up and be replaced and we want to either put down luxury vinal planking or engineered hard wood.
I specify luxury vinal planking which is the interlocking planks with tounge and groove rather than the thinner stick down vinal tiles or sheet , not because I want to sound pretentious.
Anyway I got a few quotes and the installing is about 1/2 the total bill, and we would have to get everything out from upstairs so they have a clear run at it, which will be a major pain.
So I did some googling and you tube watching and it doesn’t look like the most complicated of things to do. I would need to buy a few hand tools but nothing outrageous, and we could move stuff from one room to another , and we have time.
Anyone ever installed them before , anyone tried it without removing the base boards first ? Any advice or thoughts welcome.
I found that the vinyl planks tend to be a bit more flexible in the long direction than laminate. They bend a bit in the long direction. That made laying the vinyl down somewhat more challenging and I wound up with some gaps between planks that I couldn’t correct.
The vinyl planks is used came from Home Depot and were the best quality that they had, but perhaps higher quality (more $$$) from a different source might of made a difference.
In both cases, I left the baseboards in place and simply installed quarter-round molding at the joint between floor planks and baseboards. I’ve seen pros do that too.
Good luck! You’ll save lots of money doing it yourself.
I did my basement and I am not at all a handyman type. You will want to remove the baseboards for it to look right. Its harder on your back than anything else but you will save loads of money.
I guess for a basement the quarter round molding suggested by @MindsEye_Watering would work.
1/4 round may be the way to go, good call. I was kind of dreading ripping all the base boards off and dealing with patching watc, although I was kind of thinking that it needed an really aggressive sand and paint , but that was more ’ well if I have to do it at least…’ justification.
Was the wood laminate any easier for install in terms of rigidity?
My daughter and I boarded a lot of rooms in our house.
Lay the boards at right angles to the main windows.
Do not assume that the corners of the room are 90 degrees.
Doors are the tricky part. Keep plenty of offcuts to experiment with.
That quarter-round dowel recommended above is called a “scotia”. There is a wide choice of shapes and materials to choose from.
Good stuff, I think we would end parallel to the main windows , if we didnt the hallway would end up being right angles to the length of the hall, which would look odd I think, but interested to hear the reasoning .
Just bought 1,000 sq ft of nucore, whipsercore LVP and some underlay. It is supposed to have sound deadening core , plus cork backing , pretty hefty and study. Delivery wednesday and apparently they only drop to the kerb. I guess lugging 55 boxes upstairs will be my cardio for the day. We can test lay some peices and see what it looks like for orientation. Delray Dunes colour if anyone cares.
We went back and forth on the baseboards and decided they were in such crappy state so I am just about to start ripping up carpet and base board and we will get some new ones . I have a decent circular saw so that shouldn’t be too horrendous and I will check to see if I can borrow a nail gun. Fortunately our trash collection is awesome and they haul away almost anything on a Saturday.
We painted a bedroom door and after a couple of coats it still looks crappy , too many badly applied paint jobs over the years so I may also end up taking them down and hoicking them outside for a serious sand and paint.
I have a horrible feeling this project is going to suffer from some serious mission creep.
Also probably gonna need a bigger box of band aids.
It’s not a hard and fast rule but for aesthetic reasons you want the light to run down the length of the boards and not across them. If the room is long and narrow, like an entrance hall. You want the boards to run the length and not across the space.
Well laid down the underlay and got about 4 or 5 rows down during the week but had some gaps, we also needed to repair a section of dry wall that must have gotten damp in the past. So we took it up and sorted the wall out and cut and painted the base boards. Also spent a satisfying hour finding squeaky floor boards and whacking some nails in with a hammer.
Bout a laser level and a oscillating cutting tool thing that was for getting under the door jambs , but has been used for cutting out dry wall, sanding and other stuff, very useful tool.
After some wall painting we will hopefully start attempt two at the floor , I guess the first room is all about learning the and remembering not to shortcut the prep work.
Definitely need the knees and back of someone 20 years younger .
What a day.
We finished room number one, painted, floored and new base boards, looks good.
Probably need to make sure we close up the boards a little better but not a big deal.
We strayed in the room and realised that we should have started in the hall way and worked out as every door was going to need a U shaped cut out, and the width the tiles at the edge would have been wrong. Anyway we can fix the transition from room one to the hallway and start on the hallway and get that all correct and everything else will follow.
So I pulled up the hallway carpet and found a horror show with the floor boards. Not to go into too much detail but one big sheet of plywood had been measured incorrectly and was buckling up, which some had been fixing in the past with leveling compound and a metric fuck tonne of screws and nails, many of which were hidden under leveling compound. Also the top of the stairs is not at the same level as the rest of the floors.
Anyway had to pull up one of the sheets of plywood
And that thing fought me hard the whole way. Had to chisel out around every nail head , and find many hidden screws.
Anyway after a 14 hr day ollf removing carpets base boards and floor boards it’s up and now need to replace it tomorrow and move on to painting .
