Flooring Project

[AUDub 9,904]

Been a fun couple of days. My wife and I took advantage of the extended weekend and finally got started on a much needed home improvement project. Carpet in out girls' rooms upstairs is original and badly in need of replacement. Roughly 30 years old. We purchased about 900ft² of tongue and groove vinyl plank and decided to give it a go ourselves. Got Ava's room done and it was the worst.

Up comes the carpet.

We made a fun family project out of it. Sadie followed behind me as I pull the carpet and tac board, pulling up staples I missed or hammering them level as needed. Catherine operated the shop vac. Ava painted trim. 

Cecilia got to contribute by looking stinking cute.

Didn't much care for the power tools though.

By evening it was just me and Sadie. Child can practically do the job herself. I'm impressed.

This is as far as we got that evening.

But we managed to wrap up the room before the day was out. End result:

One room down, one more and the landing to go.

Tools were a cheap jig saw for cornering and rip cuts, an oscillating multi tool for adjusting trim height in spots, a flooring shear for the planks, utility knife, kit for flooring that included a block and pull bar, various pliers, mallets, hammers, small trim pry bar for the tackboards, full on crow bar at one point, shop vac and s*** tons of elbow grease. 

The kit came with spacers for flooring expansion but the wedge ones didn't work so well, so we returned to home depot for ¼ block spacers. 

Materials were underlayment, duct tape, 400ish feet of vinyl planks. I'm going to throw down quarter-round shortly.

Edited December 29, 2020 by AUDub

[Tiger Refuge 5,586]

10 hours ago, AUDub said:

Been a fun couple of days. My wife and I took advantage of the extended weekend and finally got started on a much needed home improvement project. Carpet in out girls' rooms upstairs is original and badly in need of replacement. Roughly 30 years old. We purchased about 900ft² of tongue and groove vinyl plank and decided to give it a go ourselves. Got Ava's room done and it was the worst.

Up comes the carpet.

We made a fun family project out of it. Sadie followed behind me as I pull the carpet and tac board, pulling up staples I missed or hammering them level as needed. Catherine operated the shop vac. Ava painted trim. 

Cecilia got to contribute by looking stinking cute.

Didn't much care for the power tools though.

By evening it was just me and Sadie. Child can practically do the job herself. I'm impressed.

This is as far as we got that evening.

But we managed to wrap up the room before the day was out. End result:

One room down, one more and the landing to go.

Tools were a cheap jig saw for cornering and rip cuts, an oscillating multi tool for adjusting trim height in spots, a flooring shear for the planks, utility knife, kit for flooring that included a block and pull bar, various pliers, mallets, hammers, small trim pry bar for the tackboards, full on crow bar at one point, shop vac and s*** tons of elbow grease. 

The kit came with spacers for flooring expansion but the wedge ones didn't work so well, so we returned to home depot for ¼ block spacers. 

Materials were underlayment, duct tape, 400ish feet of vinyl planks. I'm going to throw down quarter-round shortly.

Dude. Your girls have gotten so freaking big! I know, I know...but dang!

 

Great work man! And awesome job getting the fam involved. A little self motivation/elbow grease can go a long way in life. Great lesson for kids to learn. And more than money saved, the satisfaction of a job well done is priceless.

[Grumps 2,997]

Awesome job, Dub! Thanks for sharing! You have a beautiful family! How do you like the oscillating multi-tool? I have wondered about them.

[AUDub 9,904]

11 hours ago, Grumps said:

Awesome job, Dub! Thanks for sharing! You have a beautiful family! How do you like the oscillating multi-tool? I have wondered about them.

It's probably the most versatile tool I have besides my Dremel, but it's sort of a "jack of all trades, master of none" if that makes sense. I've used it to sand, cut drywall and concrete backer board. It works but other tools do usually do the job better, especially the bigger the job gets.

In love with the thing now though. Saved a lot of time compared to any other tool I could have used. All of the door frames had to come up a bit in order to get the flooring flush underneath them. Just get a piece of scrap flooring as a template, put the blade atop it and went to town. 

In hindsight, I sort of wish I had simply pulled the baseboards, worked with the spacers against the wall and simply reinstalled dropping them down to the flooring. More painting, but it would look a bit cleaner than the quarter round.

[AUDub 9,904]

Well finally had to splurge on a table saw today. Ran into a complication in Sadie's room and the jig is simply not accurate enough to make the proper rip cuts.

Besides a router, that about completes my woodworking tool set, and I have a Dremel that can tide me over until I need something bigger. 

[AUDub 9,904]

All done but the quarter round. 

[TXaubie 501]

On 1/11/2021 at 12:20 AM, AUDub said:

All done but the quarter round. 

Extremely late to this, but just stumbled upon it. Awesome work!!  I assume you got the 1/4 round in?  If not I would suggest shoe mold. I do this for a living, and strictly use shoe mold now. Unless I have too, and I only have to on solid wood. Where I live in a texas 90% of the homes are on a concrete slab. So I don’t do much solid wood. Engineered wood is mainly what is done if they decide to go with wood, but VP is pretty much taking over. 
 

How is the floor holding up?  Have you had any issues with it?  BTW, the job looks great!! I’m VERY impressed. You can definitely tell you did your homework before installing.

Although I am curious about the one missing piece at what looks like could be closet door? 🤷‍♂️ It was in the middle of One of the doorways in a previous picture. SORRY to call it out. I just can’t resist. My guys can relate!!  Lol…Bet  that piece was fun to get in?

[AUDub 9,904]

1 hour ago, TXaubie said:

Extremely late to this, but just stumbled upon it. Awesome work!!  I assume you got the 1/4 round in?  If not I would suggest shoe mold. I do this for a living, and strictly use shoe mold now. Unless I have too, and I only have to on solid wood. Where I live in a texas 90% of the homes are on a concrete slab. So I don’t do much solid wood. Engineered wood is mainly what is done if they decide to go with wood, but VP is pretty much taking over. 

Quarter round has been put down and it's serviceable. Did a fine job, if I do say so myself for a DIYer. I'll need to make a mental not on shoe molding going forward.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, I'd have simply dropped the baseboards looking back. 

1 hour ago, TXaubie said:

How is the floor holding up? Have you had any issues with it?  BTW, the job looks great!! I’m VERY impressed. You can definitely tell you did your homework before installing.

The floor still looks good and it holding up fine. 

One thing I didn't note on there was that Sadie's room (the second one), had to have a bit of leveling done before putting down the underlayment. I actually used some leftover thickset from a prior job in my bathroom to pull this off. Insofar, it's not been an issue at all. No bowing, clicking, separation or any of the other major issues you hear about when people do vinyl plank. 

1 hour ago, TXaubie said:

Although I am curious about the one missing piece at what looks like could be closet door? 🤷‍♂️ It was in the middle of One of the doorways in a previous picture. SORRY to call it out. I just can’t resist. My guys can relate!!  Lol…Bet  that piece was fun to get in?

It was actually the entry door for Ava's room, and at that point I was still trying to determine whether or not a solid layer of continuous vinyl plank was beyond my skill level.

Unfortunately, it was, and I ended up throwing 2 transitions down to separate the 2 rooms from the hallway. Not that it looks bad, but there is a transition in the doorway of each room. 

[TXaubie 501]

8 hours ago, AUDub said:

Quarter round has been put down and it's serviceable. Did a fine job, if I do say so myself for a DIYer. I'll need to make a mental not on shoe molding going forward.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, I'd have simply dropped the baseboards looking back. 

The floor still looks good and it holding up fine. 

One thing I didn't note on there was that Sadie's room (the second one), had to have a bit of leveling done before putting down the underlayment. I actually used some leftover thickset from a prior job in my bathroom to pull this off. Insofar, it's not been an issue at all. No bowing, clicking, separation or any of the other major issues you hear about when people do vinyl plank. 

It was actually the entry door for Ava's room, and at that point I was still trying to determine whether or not a solid layer of continuous vinyl plank was beyond my skill level.

Unfortunately, it was, and I ended up throwing 2 transitions down to separate the 2 rooms from the hallway. Not that it looks bad, but there is a transition in the doorway of each room. 

Seriously, really solid work!!  From what I can tell. As far as installation goes YOU HAVE A FULLY WARRANTED FLOOR!! Let’s put it this way. I would fully stand behind that install. So feel confident in that!! 

Everybody and their dog started making VP. I’ve been preaching to our carpet store for years now. Some of it is just crap!!  Fortunately, they do defer to my judgement. So we haven’t had a ton of issues, but recently have been dealing with  some. It’s been around just  long enough for those issues to start appearing.

The transition at the door way is a solid play. Spec wise it is probably required, but customers don’t want to hear that. So I couldn’t get by with it, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had to go back and put some in later. I tell them We’ll go with out it,  if we run into an issue we may have to add it later.  
 

Oh ya, I’m always looking for help!!  Let me know and we can get you started ASAP.  How does Monday sound to you??   😂