Adventures in Home Improvement: Installing Vinyl Plank Flooring. Re-flooring our basement with “luxury vinyl” Drop & Done plank flooring turned out to be an easy, durable, and aesthetically pleasing solution.
Vinyl flooring has a bad rep. When most people hear “vinyl flooring,” they think of kitchen sheet vinyl circa 1991. Vinyl flooring has come a long way since the 80’s and 90’s kitchens we remember. Our adventure installing vinyl plank flooring in our basement went well and turned out better than we had originally envisioned.
The basement of our house was mostly covered in two different kinds of carpeting: white and stained carpet, and old, ugly wine-colored carpet. We decided when we bought the house that we would re-do the floors as soon as we could, and after successfully installing laminate wood flooring in our attic, we figured we’d do that again in the basement as soon as we had time and money.
When we were finally ready, a friend of ours who is a contractor took a look at our basement sub floor and recommended that we do vinyl instead. Our basement has a two inch wood sub floor “bump up” on top of the concrete foundation, and the sub floor is not as level as it should be in some areas. There is also the chance that future moisture issues (common in basements) could require us to pull up and repair the sub floor in the future. He said that if we did wood laminate flooring, we’d end up having to tear it all up again in a few years. Vinyl was more resilient, flexible, and often less expensive.
To read about our experience installing wood laminate flooring in our attic, click here
We looked at the scant selection of sheet vinyls at Lowe’s and Home Depot, which was disappointing. Most of the flooring at both big box stores was only sold online, so we couldn’t look at it in person. Not to mention that the employees there don’t know much about flooring and weren’t very helpful.
Our search finally led us to Great Floors, and the sales rep did an excellent job of selling us on one of their new products, XL Flooring Drop & Done vinyl plank flooring. To be honest, the product really sold itself. We were standing on a nice wood-look vinyl floor near the front entry to the store, and the sales rep bent down and pulled up one of the planks, then laid it back down again. There was no visual indication on the flooring that pulling up a plank would be possible. It still looked tight and finished.
The vinyl plank flooring is called “Drop & Done” flooring, because it is essentially just that–lay it on the floor, fit it together, and it’s installed. Adhesive is only required for the perimeters of the room, and after that it is installed using the “tight fit” method of fitting the planks together as tightly as possible.
The price of $3.49/square foot was a bit more than we had originally budgeted for, but the easy installation, variety of styles of beautiful wood-look planks, and the ability to tear it up in the future and lay it back down if we needed to make any sub floor repairs had us sold.
The first step in installing vinyl plank flooring in our basement was to remove the old carpet, tack strips, and all the little staples out of the sub flooring. Whoever installed the carpet was a bit overzealous with the staple gun, and Paddy repeatedly shouted out expletives while painstakingly prying up all of the staples. This was by and far the worst part.
**Tip: We highly recommend getting a pair of knee pads for installing vinyl plank flooring or any other type of flooring. You’re going to be spending a lot of time on your knees on a hard surface.
Once the sub floor was clean of staples and debris, we opted to start with the back room area of our basement. I read the instructions on the XL Flooring website. We had ordered one of their recommended pressure-sensitive vinyl flooring adhesives on Amazon (Home Depot and Lowe’s didn’t carry it). It said to spread the adhesive around the perimeter in a 6-9″ wide strip using a 3/32 x 3/32 U notch trowel or paint roller.
**Note: The XL Flooring company recommends that the room you are installing in be heated to room temperature at least 24 hours before and after installation. If you are installing in a room that you don’t heat regularly, be sure to bring it up to temperature the day before. The vinyl expands and contracts with temperature fluctuation, so temperature is important for proper fit during installation. You also want your flooring to be stored in the room you are going to install it in for 24 hours or more prior to installation, to give it time to acclimate to its new environment.
We opted for the trowel method. The U trowel they recommended was sold out at the hardware store, so we got a 1/8 V-notch trowel instead. We spread the adhesive around the perimeter of the room with the trowel, trying to keep it as thin and even as possible. Then we followed the instructions on the XL Flooring installation guide and waited 45 minutes for it to “flash off,” or dry to the point where it doesn’t transfer to your finger when touched.
While waiting for the adhesive to flash off/dry, XL Flooring suggested taking flooring planks out of the box and letting them adjust to being out of the packaging.
We waited 45 minutes, and then went back down to check on our adhesive. It was as wet as it was when I applied it. We decided to give it some more time, and watch videos about installing vinyl plank flooring in the meantime.
We came across this video on YouTube, which informed us that adhesive can take one to two hours to flash off. They used the paint roller method, and did a lot more floor prep than we did. They also had a handy-dandy vinyl plank cutter that made it look super easy. We didn’t have such a wonderful and magical contraption, we were going to go the utility knife route.
Two hours later, the adhesive was still wet. I came to the conclusion that I had applied it too thick, and scraped off excess adhesive with a clean, stiff piece of cardboard.
Another hour later, the adhesive was getting there but I had to resort to helping it along with a hair dryer. We decided that the paint roller method of adhesive application is the better way to go.
Finally, it was ready to go. We began laying the planks tight along the wall, cutting the last plank to size with the cut edge against the wall.
On the next row of planks, start at the same end that you finished on with the last row. This will help stagger the joints for more strength and a better appearance for the floor.
Even though the actual laying of the flooring was easier than laminate flooring that you have to click together in a single row and tap into place, the cutting with a utility knife ended up being pretty cumbersome. The last row was the most difficult, as Paddy had to cut the planks lengthwise to fit into the last narrow space.
Overall, the 8.5 ft x 11 ft room took three hours to complete. Paddy vowed that we needed to find a vinyl plank cutter like they had in the instructional video.
Not wanting to buy a tool that we would only want to use once, we went to the West Seattle Tool Library to see if they had one we could loan out. We brought a drop end of one of the planks with us to see what they might suggest.
The West Seattle Tool Library didn’t have a vinyl tile cutter, but they looked at our plank and said that we could just use a miter saw. We are a bit green when it comes to power tools, but we had invested in a miter saw a couple years back, and were happy to know that the planks were okay to use with it.
Installing vinyl plank flooring in the first room was a learning experience, and now we were a bit more prepared for the main part of our basement.
We bought a low-pile paint roll cover and rolled the adhesive in a much thinner application around the perimeter of the room. it was L-shaped, so we did an adhesive strip down the intersection of the room as well. The paint roller method was much easier and provided a much thinner and more even application of the adhesive.
We applied the adhesive a bit thicker around the fireplace edge of the sub floor, as there was no wall for it to press up against. We thought we would need to wait a couple hours again for it to flash off, but within an hour it was ready. The adhesive dries clear/yellowish, so you will start to see the white disappear as the adhesive dries to the point where it is ready to lay flooring on.
This time, with the saw set up, the process went a bit faster. It was still a lot of work. A lot of bending and squatting, getting up and down again. We were sorer at the end of the day than we expected.
Also, I know these photos are all of Paddy working, but I was helping too, I swear!
We ran into a couple tricky spots around the fireplace and door frames, but were able to cut a few funky pieces to fit with the utility knife.
Finally, we had a new floor. We are extremely happy with it.
**Note: XL Flooring recommends not putting any furniture back onto the new flooring for 24 hours after installation, to give the flooring time to adjust.
To add the finishing touch to our new floor floor, we bought a matching piece of Versatrim trim strip (also sold at Great Floors) to transition between the new vinyl plank flooring, and the sheet vinyl in the other part of our basement. It was fairly easy to install, just cut to size, screw the metal track into the floor, and snap the top trim piece into the track. Once you’re sure it’s snapped into the metal track, lightly pound it with a rubber mallet to secure.
With the main parts of our basement floor finished, we just had one last room to do: our storage room. We figured that we were pros by this point, and it would be a cinch.
Then we pulled up the carpet in the storage room and found the worst sub floor job ever.
There was a gap down the middle of the floor that someone had screwed random pieces of wood into, and one half of the floor was about 0.25″ lower than the other half of the floor.
We consulted the great Facebook hive mind, and floor leveling compound was suggested by a few friends.
The floor leveling compound was kind of like spackle for floors. We really didn’t know what we were doing, and we probably didn’t do the most professional job. But we filled in the gaps and created a sort of slope between the two different thicknesses of sub floor. The flooring compound dries FAST. The instructions said not to mix more than you can use in 15 minutes, but I’d almost say don’t mix more than you can use in 10 minutes. It wasn’t a very easy substance to work with.
We finished the storage room flooring, and there is still a part where there is a ridge that you can feel when you step on it. At this point, we decided that it was a low-traffic storage room and we just wanted to be done with it. Had this been a main room, we would have probably tried to fix the sub floor or level it out better. We were thankful that we went with flexible vinyl flooring as opposed to laminate, which is not flexible and requires a completely flat surface.
Overall we are super happy with our new floors and would absolutely recommend the XL Drop & Done vinyl plank flooring. It feels durable, comes with a lifetime guarantee (haven’t read the fine print on that yet), and was easier to install than laminate. It does come with a higher price tag, but it was worth it. Installing vinyl plank flooring is a good DIY home project. No need to hire someone.
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