Flip that Floor!

How Nathan & I installed our own flooring + how you can too!

Before you get any ideas on how handy Nathan & I are, let me just preface that thought by saying we have NEVER installed any kind of flooring together or separate! This project was 100% a learning process and before this, we have only done one project together before in college a few years ago.

After buying our house, we told each other we would learn how to be HANDY and boy oh boy did this project teach us a few things! Now, before we take all the credit, we did have some help along the way, one being Stovers Liquidators! The other help, possibly the most important was my sweet dad.

To break this project down into steps that are easy to follow, I’m going to walk through all every step in order so you can do this project yourself!

Let’s Get Started!!

Step 1: Choose your flooring type

This decision is by far the hardest! For this step, Nathan and I had so much help from Stovers Liquidators in not only choosing the type of flooring, but color, and installation process. Stover’s has so many choices including Hardwood, Engineered Hardwood, Laminate, Vinyl Plank, Commercial Vinyl and even Hardwood-like tile.

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Since we are planning on keeping our Condo to rent in the future after we move out, the flooring choice needed to be durable, cleanable and waterproof. Some of our neighbors who are renters have shared horror stories of their washer or water heater leaking and having huge stains on their floors, which I COULDN’T image happening in our house! Those three characteristics were most important in choosing the type of floor and led us to Vinyl Plank due to its extreme durability, 100% waterproof capabilities and can be cleaned with any water solutions.

Step 2: Choose your Color

After selecting the flooring type, color was the next choice to make! One thing Stovers recommended when selecting a color, lay two-three planks on the floor and line them up. This gives a realistic view of the flooring once installed and shows the color difference between planks. REMEMBER: each plank is going to have a color difference, but this is a good thing! To make sure you approve of all the colors in the floor, laying out a few pieces gives the best view of the whole picture.

As you can see above, the two planks are from two different boxes and have very different variations, one more blue toned and the other with browns. We ended up choosing the planks above due to the blue tones that would match our current bathroom flooring: white marble tile. If you are doing a renovation, be sure to select a color that will match any existing flooring you are keeping and your countertops. Our current kitchen has black granite, so again picking this color above went perfect with the existing conditions we were keeping!

Step 4: Demolition

Now for the fun part: DEMO DAY!

Due to this being our first large scale remodel project, we had to buy all the tools from scratch. If you are in the same boat, I provided a list below of all the tools we purchased for removing the existing conditions.

• Hammer x2 (one for each person)
• Crowbar
• Duct-tape
• Safety Glasses
• Packing Knife
• Rubber Mallet
• Putty Knife (used for removing carpet tacking)
• Construction Trash Bags
• Appliance Dolly

After purchasing everything we needed, we went home and got to work! Our large scale trash drop-off required the carpet to be separated from any wood or nails which are used to attach the carpet to the concrete flooring. To keep everything separate, we rolled and taped all the carpet, and used the construction trash bags for the wood and nails. We also used the bags for all the tile and laminate flooring in the other parts of our house.

Step 5: Pre-Installation

Since our house is pretty small, we had to do demolition room by room and install room by room. Starting with the largest room was our preference and then we moved all our furniture into the completed room and moved to the next. While this process did take a little longer, it let us keep all our furniture inside.

When starting the installation process for this remodel, be sure to sweep and get all the rubble off the concrete or subfloor. If any of the existing material is left, it can create uneven spots in the new flooring.

Again, Nathan and I did not have any of the tools needed for this project, so if you are a newbie like us, below is a list for reference:

• Hammer
• Rubber Mallet
• Chop Saw or Table Saw

While looking online for tools to cut Vinyl Plank flooring, many proposed a box cutter as the best option, but after trying many times, it proved to be very difficult to cut through a higher grade floor. On our second day of work, we picked up this Rockwell table saw which resembles a bandsaw, and was the best decision ever! It was much easier to cut corners and straight cuts than any other high-end tools and was a fraction of the cost!

Step 6: Installation

Now to the good stuff: actually installing the floor! When laying the planks down, pre-select which direction makes sense for your room, usually, the longest wall in the house is the best direction to follow. We did this in our home, and it creates the illusion of a larger room. Also, start in one corner, and go the entire length of the wall, then come back up to start the next plank. The pattern that worked for our home was a 1/3: 2/3: 3/3 pattern that gave a great look in our home.

After choosing the direction and pattern, make sure to open more than one box to lay out the floor. Again, the colors differ slightly in each box, so pulling one plank from each box will create consistency throughout the space. For our project, we opened 3 boxes at a time and kept one additional box to put the spare cuts in to pull from.

Tip #1: Bring as many boxes of flooring in as possible to keep the material you are pulling from the same temperature. We could only bring in 8 boxes at a time, due to limited space, and it created a problem when trying to lock pieces together. In the end, all the boxes had to be the same temperature to pull from multiple boxes.

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The flooring we chose had padding built in, and since it is being applied to a concrete pad, we could place the flooring directly down. The grooves that are built in, provide a snap-and-lock method where you physically slide pieces together. Above are two photos seeing the progress of our master bedroom.

Timeline for this project:

• Thursday Afternoon: Start Day (worked until 1 am)
• Friday: a full day of work until 2 am
• Saturday: a full day of work until 2 am, around 4 am my dad got into town to help us!
• Sunday: a full day of work until 4 am!

We did complete this project in one weekend, but it was very exhausting and took about a week for us to get back on our normal sleep schedule. I would recommend spending a little more time or have more hands helping on the project.

Before Photos!

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Above are two photos from before we moved in. In the living room, and throughout our house, we had this tan carpet that I couldn’t wait to get rid of the moment we moved in! Our kitchen had a peel-n-stick laminate that again was a cheap product we wanted to remove. Also, when the previous owner sold our house, they kept the small white fridge that is in the photo, and permanently scratched the laminate creating a huge dent in the existing flooring. I was so happy to finally get rid of both of these!

After Photos!

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The moment you’ve all been waiting for! This process was such a fun renovation job and I still can’t believe Nathan and I did this together (with the help of my sweet dad!) As you can see, the flooring matched perfect with our existing furniture, and creates one seamless line throughout our home.

If you are new to my blog, many videos sharing the entire renovation process are under my highlights tab here labeled Flooring Remodel.

As you can see, this renovation project was a very easy job for first timers! I would highly recommend trying this yourself because if Nathan and I can complete this I know you can too! While there were many sleepless nights during this project, we have so many memories to look back on and laugh about! Heres a few additional photos from our renovation!