THE FLOORING!
Covid-19 gave me the crazy, outrageous idea of changing out our flooring… and to do it by myself no less. Once I got started, I think I took off more than I could chew.
I broached the idea about changing our flooring when I started watching all of these home renovation videos on YouTube. It gave me the confidence to say to myself, “Hey, that can’t be that hard.” hahahaha Lisa was obviously hesitant on the prospect of me tackling such a huge project. I mean, she was partly right. I mean, changing flooring is hard enough… but doing it for an entire house, while your family still lives in it, and all of the furniture is still in it???…. well, like I said; took off more than I could chew.
But with that said, I didn’t really know that yet. Bright eyed and bushy tailed I tell ya. Lisa and I went to a flooring store of which my Uncle recommended. We didn’t really shop around, we just made the decision to go with these guys, got a quote, got my Uncle’s discount, and off we went. I ended up paying about $3.29/sq ft for Vinyl plank flooring.
Here’s the marketing spew:
ETM ThermaCore RC™ is an engineered rigid core vinyl flooring product that is a 100% waterproof, and can be installed in commercial or residential applications. European Oak and Ceramic Tile styles (LVT) available, worry free approved, sunlight approved, kid approved, pet approved and enjoy healthy home living!
The main thing about this type of flooring is that it’s waterproof. At our old house, we put in laminate, and I was always extremely paranoid about any water being on the floor. For prolonged exposure to water on laminate flooring will cause it to bubble up, and ultimately, will need to be replaced. It really sucks. And you can’t just easily remove it. You need to take out all the planks to get to that part of the floor to be able to replace whatever was damaged. It’s a total pain.
Here we are looking at 3 possible colour samples of which we brought home. We ended up picking the most ‘natural’ looking wood coloured one.
$7800 later, I had over 1800 sq feet of flooring purchased. I borrowed my buddy’s truck, and brought home about one third of the flooring first.
The Living Room – May 23rd, 2020
So here I am on May 23rd, Day 1 of ‘THE FLOORING PROJECT’. Prep of the living room (which is really a kids play room), and the removal of all the baseboards, clean-up; and I was ready to being with Plank number 1 (of many).
Day 1 of a new project is always interesting. This is when you run into little issues here and there, and have to figure out how to solve them. I mean, for a seasoned flooring installer, it’s no problem; but for an amateur DIY person like myself, it takes a lot more thought and care. For example, an angled wall corner, how do you cut the flooring? Oh, the plank flooring isn’t square all of a sudden, how do I keep it square? How do I get below this door trim? How do I angle the flooring to connect to the next plank, when something is in the way, and I can’t angle it in properly? These are just a few of the things I ran into the first day. Needless to say, it was a long one, and my back was pretty sore from all of the bending down.
The nice thing about this room though, was that it was pretty large, and relatively square. It gave me the opportunity to get on a bit of a roll, by just installing plank after plank; all the while making sure each one was square to the old flooring. Oh, yes, the old flooring, I almost forgot.
So Lisa had the great idea of just installing the new flooring over the existing flooring. This would save a TON of time. I wouldn’t have to remove any existing flooring, I wouldn’t have to go to the dump, I wouldn’t have to deal with all of the dust, demo, and most importantly, I wouldn’t have to waste time. An added benefit? The old flooring would act as a soft sub flooring, which would provide some cushioning for the new flooring. It was a win-win! Oh, and I wouldn’t have to finish any parts between the now lowered baseboards (because if we removed the cork flooring, the new flooring would be lower) than the new flooring.
So yeah, I was super happy about that. After day 1, I managed to finish the living room. Here she is.
Not too shabby, right? It was definitely the right room to start with. It gave me a bit of a primer to get my feet wet with this installation, there wasn’t any real heavy furniture, and it was simple enough that there weren’t too many odd corners, shapes, and sizes.
Now, as an aside, if you do ever do decide to do your own flooring. I suggest investing in some tools. One would be a laminate flooring cutter. This thing just saved me a ton of time, and it just created clean cuts. Clean in multiple ways, in that you don’t get any of the dust from using a table saw, or compound mitre saw, and clean, in that the cut is super clean as well. Think of the cutter as a guillotine, but instead of chopping off one’s head, it’s meant for a much less gruesome purpose. Another thing to invest in, would be to have an angle grinder with a nice thin blade. This enables you to be able to do any different cuts, of which the laminate cutter can’t do. Obviously, a table saw is really helpful too (so borrow one if you can). You’ll be able to get away with out having a compound mitre saw, as long as you have all of the above. If you’re removing trim, most definitely invest in a product called ‘The Trim Puller”. This thing is awesome. It’ll assist you in removing any of your existing trim baseboards, without damaging the drywall on the wall and without damaging the actual baseboards themselves. Oh, yes, and the angle grinder is also useful for sawing off all of the old brad nails on the baseboards.
Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s continue.
I think of one of the best things I found (while watching all of those home renovation youtube videos) was a vent register cover for our forced air vents. I bought a bunch of registers, called Aria vents. They are a Canadian owned company, and you can find their products at Home Depot. They are pretty great, in that you can cut to size your flooring and insert it into the register itself, so it creats a realy attractive looking cover. Here’s what I mean:
You can see the old register vent cover and the new one. I think it’s quite the stark contrast in atractiveness if you ask me.
The Family Room – May 24, 2020
So day 2 started with the Family room area.
This area would post to be a bit more challenging than the room I did yesterday.
One of the challenges about this flooring installation, is that it’s all one contiguous floor. There is no separation between rooms. This makes it way more difficult, because now you have one huge floating floor, which is all interconnected; and really, any mistakes that are made can be huge ones, because to fix them, means you have to remove any of the existing flooring that you may have installed, and go backwards until you reach your mistake, and start over again. It makes it way harder but utlimately, it looks way better once it’s completed.
Now with that said, when I started to work on this area, it meant now I had to angle the planks in the opposite direction, because I was working the flooring now left to right instead of right to left (essentially the different direction of which I was doing yesterday). The planks go in easier one direction, than the other. I started yesterday obviously going the ‘easier’ way. Today, because like I metioned, because of the one continous floor, I had to go the other way to complete the family room. This wasn’t a huge deal, but it made it more time consuming, and harder to make sure every plank fit snugly and correctly. To be honest, the flooring itself wasn’t the easiest tongue and groove installs. It’s pretty finicky, and isn’t very forgiving. If you don’t have the plank in perfectly, it’ll look a bit weird. So because of my anal rententiveness (and the wife’s as well), I had to make sure every plank was in perfectly before moving on to the next.
Below are some photos of me working on this area. You’ll also notice the huge difference between the old flooring, and the new.
Anyhow, there was some cursing and screaming during day 2. I did manage to get through it though. We also ended up moving all the furniture to the living room, and our family had lunch in there. hehe
Dining Area – May 25, 2020
Day 3 should really be called night 3. For this was a weekday, and I resumed doing the flooring after I finished work. There would be many more of these weeknights going forward.
I ended up finishing the dining area, as well as the area where the bar stools sit. I wouldn’t be able to do much more than that over 1 evening.
The Hallway and moving appliances – May 26, 2020
May 26th, after work. So I resumed working on the floors after work again. This time, I would start to work on the kitchen area. There would be some huge challenges here though. Literally huge. The Thermador gas stove would have to be moved, and disconnected from the gas source. Our big Samsung fridge would also have to be moved, and our Kitchen Aid dishwasher would also have to be removed! Such a pain in the butt, for such a small area. Honestly, I had no idea how we were going to move that 400 pound behemoth of a stove.
So I started working on the hallway area, and the area by the East side of the kitchen up to where it would meet up to the end of the kitchen Island.
The hallway actually posed to be a huge problem. There was so much stuff in there, including door trim that needed to removed (and eventually replaced) as well as removal of the sliding barn door, the furnace closet doors, and of course all of the baseboards and trim.
Then when I started working on the hallway, there were just so many cuts that had to be made, because of all doorway in the middle of the hallway, which prevented me from having long consistent whole planks being laid down.
Case in point:
Now, Lisa and I ended up being able to move the stove top relatively easily. We did this by propping up the stove onto some scrap vinyl plank flooring that I had, and sliding it to another place on the newly installed floor. It worked out really well.
I then started to work on the removal of the dishwasher, and we were also able to move the fridge relatively easily as well. Phew!
So here we are at the end of night 4 Stove and fridge are in the middle of the kitchen, and the place is looking like a mess.
Our late night meal after a night of hard work!
Kitchen Area – May 27, 2020
So the next day started promptly after work, May 27th, 4:59pm. I was now able to work on the now vacated kitchen area. For lunch earlier that day, Lisa used our portable hot pot stove to make hot dogs! hahaha, it worked great.
The kitchen area posed some problems because of the large Kitchen Island. I now needed the planks to meet and also be square. It’s not super clear here, but you can kind of get the idea with the placement of the red arrows I’ve drawn below. Basically, the planks on either side of the island, need to join up perfectly, and line up once the meet. Luckily, it was close enough, and I was able to get it to work.
After that, I was just getting all the right angles and the correct cuts in this area. I was also able to use a lot of spare pieces that I had, that maybe had some flaws, or weren’t perfect, under the stove. I mean, really, no one would see that area; for the stove would always be in its place.
Oh, and aside…. scrap pieces, waste, and stress. hahaha. So, during this whole process of this installation, I’ve been incredibly anal in attempting to have the least amount of waste possible. They say you should account for about 5% waste when doing flooring. So say and 1800 square foot house, you’d have about 90 square feet of waste. The problem is, I would look at every square foot of waste, and I would think… crap! that’s $3.29!!! or i’d see a cracked tongue or groove, and that’d be another $7-8, etc. Man, honestly, if I was able to get over that aspect, it would have made the install much better. However, I just couldn’t get over the fact that each piece of wasted flooring, or a mistake that was made to the flooring, would end up being a hit on the ol’ wallet. Anyhow…. I digress.
So I managed to finish most of the kitchen that night.
The Stairs – May 30, 2020
I ended up taking a couple of days off from the installation, for I had a Pension Committee meeting on full day of May 28th, and I don’t recall why, but I didn’t do any install work on the 29th either.
So, it was now May 30, 2020, a Saturday. A full weekend to work on the install again. It’s ultimately been 7 full days since I started this job. I was now at the most difficult part of the project. THE STAIRS.
I had no idea that the stairs would be as diffuclt as they would be. It was nothing short of terrible. A non-stop barage of trips that had to made up and down the stairs, measuring, cutting, re-measuring, cutting again, re-measuring, cutting again. And on top of all this, I had to figure out a way to be able to level out the stairs so when I installed the stair capping over the existing nosing of the stairs, it had to be flat, flush and level. The stair nosing that we purchased, you see doesn’t actually lie over the existing flooring, but rather it fits into an existing tongue and groove. This means 2 things, the plank that it connects to has to be the exact depth, and secondly, the stair nosing, because it doesn’t have that much depth, has to be glued down as well using construction glue. Pain!
Here’s an example of a stair nose casing that is flush and the second one with an over hang. The flush one obviously looks way better, but is much more of a pain to install. (this is what we chose)
The examples of these photos above are of hardwood flooring and laminate, but you get the idea.
My thought process was that I would actually be able to remove the existing stair nose casing…. this ended up being a complete fail… as you can see here:
LOL. I ended up having to replace that hole piece. Luckily I had a spare piece of plywood of which I painted that I was able to use.
Anyhow, here are some photos before.
Notice that on the old stairs, where the flooring meets the backing of the stairs, there is a 1/4 round piece of trim. This basically enables you to cover up any flaws, if you don’t have it cut perfectly. Lisa, didn’t want the 1/4 round in place, because she thought it was ugly. This opened up a whole new set of challenges for me, because now each plank had to be cut perfectly! I mean, perfect! As you’ll recall from above, I also needed it perfect on the opposite side, because this is where it would attach to the tongue of the stair nosing! Like I said, it was a pain!
Here’s where I finished after the first day… (I completed 2 stairs) hahahahaha
Stairs – May 31, 2020
I thought the stairs would be a simple task. I honestly had no idea how difficult it would be. But on this day, I ended up getting on more of a roll. I was able to utilize planks of which I measured from the stair below, and just use that as a template, and make minor adjustments and cuts as I ascended each stair.
You’ll notice the weights holding the glued down nose casing.
Day 2 of the stairs were complete! I had no idea that I would spend the amount of time that I did on this. A whole weekend, just to do the stairs…. but it was finally done! I could now resume on finishing downstairs.
Completion of the first floor – June 1
I resumed working on the downstairs on Jun 2. I had to actually replace our door trim, because it had more of an old school tapered look that Lisa didn’t like. So we bought some new door trim from Home Depot, painted it, and I cut and installed it over this day.
Isla and Lisa also ended up painting the barn door white.
Here’s the furnace closet, naked of baseboards et al.
Having finished the downstairs, and the stairwell; I decided to take some time off for the rest of the week. I managed to get some workouts in again, and just tried to recharge. Renovating all weekend, then working in the weekdays, teaching the kids, and then renovating again at night…. it definitely takes a toll. (Also, it was Lisa’s birthday coming up!)
The 2nd Floor – June 6th, 2020
So here we are, another Saturday. This is now 14 days into the project, and we are leading into the 3rd weekend of which I’d be working on the flooring. The first level has been completed with the exception of all the finishing work (baseboards, additional trim work, transitions, etc).
I unfortunately didn’t take too many before photos… but here are some:
Here’s a walkthrough (I didn’t go to the office, because Lisa was working in there:
I had to start at the top of the stairs, for the panels there would have to meet with the stair nosing for the top stair. This provided some issues, for the old nosing was quite a bit higher, and created a slope, if I were to put the new nosing over this one. I ended up laying some cardboard over the existing flooring to attempt to level this out. It kind of worked, until… I’ll get to that later.
I finished doing the flooring in hallway upstairs, as well as the linen closet (as you’ve seen in a recent posting, the new office), as well as the additional room aka the office space that Lisa currently works in. Doing that room was pretty quick, for there wasn’t much furniture, and it was a relatively small room. Yesssssssss…. the second floor was definitely going to be much easier!
Master Bedroom – June 7th, 2020
Now I was getting on a roll. The rooms were relatively straight forward, for they are pretty rectangular, and there are no real angles. The only issues, are the door jams, baseboard heaters, and the closets. Other than that, not too much too contend with. The kids and Lisa ended up going to a bbq at Tammy and Terry’s of which I would have love to have attended, but I really wanted to complete this room before night’s end; so we could get the bed, and all of the furniture back in place. Speaking of which, the furniture was a bit of a pain, for the Ikea Pax cabinets I have are huge, and were full. We did manage to move them, but not before I broked the backing off on one of the Pax cabinets, and not before I had to take apart the ceiling fan, and all of the accompanying fan blades and lighting. (The Pax was that tall). I did manage to fix the cabinet, so that was fine; but that Ikea stuff is definitely not meant to be moved.
That was it for the weekend.
Top of the stairs – June 8th, 2020
After work on this Monday, I started back at the top of the stairs. There was a little section, of where I put the cardboard over the old flooring to even it out at the top of the stairs so I could have a gradual sloped floor that eventually met the top of the stair nose casing. You can see the cardboard in the below photo.
Unfortnately, this didn’t work out. There was part at the top of the stairs, if you stepped on it, there was a dip, and you could see the flooring move. Not good. So what could I do?
I ended up having to remove the new stair nose casing of which I had glued down 2 days before. I used a bunch of my tools, including the oscillating tool, a chisel, a hammer, and a bunch of care to try to remove it, and to preserve the casing; for if I ruined it, I’d have had to have purchased another 12 foot nose casing for $105. (even though I’d only need less than 3 feet) I did manage to preserve it, and remove it, through the construction glue and all. I then removed the old nose casing, the cardboard, and then re-installed the new casing, and all of the flooring. It worked out well, but it wasted a whole night.
Regardless, it was done, and it was done right, so I was very happy.
The Kids’ room – June 9th, 2020
During this time, I’ve also been using my cordless bradnailer to put back all of the trim, and baseboards. That tool has come in super handy too. I also feel less guiltly buying these tools, because we’re saving a bunch on labour anyhow, so if I can buy these tools, and use them not just for this install, but for any other jobs in the future; I feel that it’s more than worth the investment.
I started the kids room in earnest, because I knew this would be the LAST room! I couldn’t believe it.
I finished off the kids room pretty darn quickly. I think I did it in about 3 hours, after I had removed all of the baseboards and trim. The furniture in the bedroom was also relatively easy to move, so it made it even quicker for me.
Trim work, baseboards, transitions – June 10th – June 13th
Over the following few days, I now needed to work on all of the details. Installing back all of the trim, the baseboards, and completing the transitions between the bathroom tile flooring and the vinyl plank flooring, as well as installing new trim at some of the doors and the foot of the stairs.
The first photo below is the trim at the base of the door, and the other 3 are the transition trim to the 3 bathrooms. This actually needs to be glued down and positioned with something heavy on it over night so it can set. (similar to the stair nosing).
Then, there was of course the patching up of every brad nail hole on the baseboards and trim, and then repainting and touching up all of the trim and baseboards. It’s time consuming, but it’s simple really, and it’s just work.
To conclude…
So there we have it. I was able to complete the flooring job in exactly 21 days. There were maybe 6 days in there that I took off. I actually don’t know the hours I put in, but let’s just say I averaged 8 per day (for I worked less on the weekdays, but more on the weekends). So I probably spent about 120 hours give or take during this time. That included 3 full weekends of work, where I would start off early in the morning, and essentially end working at night. Then of course, plenty of weeknights, where I’d work 5-6 hours easy.
I’m sure it would have taken a professional much less time, but honestly, I was so particular about every thing, that I think I would have done a better job than any pro would have done. Like I said, it took way longer, but at least I know it was done right! In addition, I think I probably only had about a 2% waste on the boards. We were also able to return some of the flooring, which we didn’t need because it was extra. So all in all, the flooring ended up costing us about $6200. So yeah, $6200 and 120 hours of my time. I’m not sure what we would have saved in labour, but I’d assume at least 6-7k in labour, especially considering we had existing furniture, and we needed to remove and reinstall, and refinish the trim and baseboards.
And this is what we ended up with:
As you can imagine, incredibly satisfying. I’m very proud of what I was able to achieve, and that I was able to plow through this job, problem solve, and really, just put in the work. It’s just labour at the end of the day. The results speak for themselves, and we are so happy with how it makes our place feel. It’s brighter, cleaner, and just makes the place feel so much nicer. Now, was it worth all of the work? Would I have rather have paid someone to do it? Would I do it again?
Was it worth all of the work? Yeah, it was worth it, especially after looking at the results.
Would I have paid someone??? Probably not, for I think I would have did a better job, we saved money, and I was able to do it during Covid!
Would I do it again? Well, depends. Would I do it again, if our floors were still that ugly brown colour? Then yes, yes I would.
hahaha, ok, i’m done with patting my own back. Until the next project!