My son recently asked for help installing vinyl flooring in his bathroom. So we took a trip to the local home center to pick up materials and supplies. What I found surprised me. I knew that vinyl flooring had come a long way since the days when I was a young father, but even within the past few years, there have been eye-popping advancements. No more boring patterns or unconvincing imitations of wood, tile, and stone. The products we saw were virtually indistinguishable from ‘the real thing.’ Even better, all we needed to do the job was a carpenter square and a utility knife. My son chose a rustic pine plank-style flooring, ideal for areas that get wet. (Did I mention my grandson’s penchant for splashing at bath time?) In addition to being waterproof, the vinyl planks had the texture of real wood grain, were heavy enough to feel solid underfoot, and had a convincing look complete with knots and splits. Related: Bathroom Flooring: A Wealth of Options The planks were designed to join together at half-lap joints with contact adhesive pre-applied to the mating surfaces.

Pressed together and rolled, the planks would form a tight bond.Puppies For Sale Hammond La One thing that hasn’t changed about installing vinyl flooring—or any type of flooring, for the matter—is the need for a perfectly smooth and level underlayment. Morkie Pups For Sale In NjIn this bathroom, the existing underlayment, which was covered with adhesive from floors past, also had some water damage due to a toilet-seal leak. Repair Leaking Delta Single Handle Kitchen FaucetSo, with little hesitation, we decided to rip it out and replace it with 1/4″ luan plywood. Sometimes old underlayment can be reused. This was not one of those times. We tore up the old underlayment using a hefty prybar and banged home the nails left behind.

We also removed the damaged top-layer subflooring near the toilet and replaced it with a plywood patch of identical thickness. Careful measuring was necessary to make sure floor penetrations would align with cutouts in the underlayment. The hole for the toilet drain, and notches for for valves and piping, were cut with a saber saw. The underlayment was fastened to the subfloor with screws 8″ apart in each direction, and all joints and fastener holes were filled with patching compound. Ring shank nails or staples work well, too. Just be sure that fastener heads are set below the underlayment surface; otherwise they will telegraph through to the finished floor. Perhaps the only tricky part of the job was ensuring that, upon reaching the other side of the room, we didn’t end up with a too-narrow final plank (less than 2″ wide). Upon dividing the width of the room by the plank width of 6″, we found that the remainder—2-1/2″—would indeed be wide enough. If the remainder had been less than 2″, we would have had to ‘rip’ an inch or two off the first plank we put down.

Of course, there is no sawing involved in vinyl plank flooring. To cut the planks, we only had to measure and then score the flooring the back side with a utility knife. Each break was quite clean.Whether your goal is to fix, tinker, build or make something better, your next adventure in DIY starts here. For more on flooring, consider: How To: Clean Vinyl Flooring 5 Eco-Friendly Flooring Solutions Bathroom Floor Tile: 9 Top OptionsOne of the first projects that we wanted to tackle, once we were settled into our new home, was both of our bathrooms. It was easy to pick the smaller bathroom of the two to start with. Silke was less than enthused with the over-sized and outdated vanity and I wasn’t moved by the old flooring. The same wall color was used throughout the whole house so a different shade of paint was going to help out with setting the bathrooms apart from the rest of the house. Working from the bottom to the top. On the first day we took out the vanity and looked at the old, worn and dated linoleum that remained.

We wanted it gone but I was even more reluctant to see what was underneath. The floor was fine structurally but of course the linoleum had been glued and it would be a huge mess to try and get rid of it.We really weren’t too keen on the idea of laying more linoleum. Silke just doesn’t care for it and I had kicked around the idea of putting down laminate flooring like the kind we had put down back in South Carolina. It looked good, see picture above, but I wasn’t really sure if this was a smart move to make because this floor was going into a bathroom. Moisture build up was going to be a constant issue. Then we talked about tiling the bathrooms, we even went to a ‘How To Lay Tiles’ class at Home Depot one Sunday afternoon. It was while looking at tiles and laminate floors in the store that we first came across vinyl plank flooring. There was another couple looking at flooring when we came across it. They had laid out a couple of pieces right in the isle and he was examining how they looked and pointed out that they easily snapped together.

It looked really good and the wood grain on the pieces actually had a nice feel to them. The thing that really garnered my attention was that this type of floating flooring is 100% water proof. The bathroom floor being wet is really not an issue anymore, and just when I didn’t think it could get any better, I read that this type of flooring could be ‘installed directly over other existing hard surface floors‘. Rather than ripping up the existing linoleum we could bury it… a fitting resting spot to it’s well lived life.We had something that looked good, is sturdy (the planks are 5.5 mm thick), and easy to install. Best of all, it fits the bill for our bathroom remodel. The cost is around $2.80 / Sq. Ft., we only needed 1 1/2 boxes for our small 6′ bathroom… there are 12 – 5″ x 48″ planks in a box. Smartcore Vinyl Plank Flooring by Natural Floors Installation is a snap. You just snap the pieces together. Relying on our experience with putting together our laminate floor, we forged ahead with putting down the SMARTCORE premium engineered flooring.

The planks are very sturdy, inflexible and the tabs do not easily break off. For our previous laminate floor project we bought a table saw, which we sold again after the flooring was laid. Owning a table saw wasn’t necessary with the SMARTCORE vinyl plank flooring. All we used to cut the pieces was our miter saw and for the cuts around plumbing fixtures we simply scored the pieces with a utility knife. Our little bathroom got even smaller with both of us trying to work together to measure and put the proper pieces in place. We quickly got a system down… Silke would pick out the pieces so that we didn’t have the same pattern running together (we noticed 5 different patterns in a box). We measured together, then I cut them in the garage and handed them back to her so she could lay them down. Our room wasn’t square. We split the difference between the two sides and we were able to cover the difference with the 1/4 inch trim. This flooring may be made out of vinyl, and is quite sturdy, but I really didn’t feel comfortable pounding on it with a conventional hammer.

One thing I did notice is that when Silke applied pressure from the end of the row using a crowbar while I pounded on the seam on the other end, we could hear a definitive snap as the two pieces joined. This is really a good video to watch and learn even if you’ve already laid out floating flooring before. With each piece of flooring that we added we saw the bathroom take on a completely different feel. Even in this very small space we didn’t have any trouble making the pieces fit together. We used a rubber mallet and a rubber block to ensure that the seams butted up together tightly. You can hardly see the seams at all now and water beads right up on the surface. Once the trim was added we couldn’t help but marvel at how well it at all came together. We love the look of the planks, the color we chose is dark brown with a touch of gray. These vinyl planks feel surprisingly real, like actual wood, since they have ripples on top. To finish our bathroom redo project we installed a smaller, bright white vanity which makes the room look a lot bigger.