Vinyl Plank Flooring - Benefits And Installation Guide

Vinyl plank flooring is a great option if you want to get all the benefits that the hardwood flooring offers you without the extra costs involved. Basically hardwood floors are very loved by everybody alike. However their price can go up to thousands to have your flooring installed in a small home. Also the actual installation is very difficult and needs the help of a professional who will charge you extra for it. This is where vinyl plank flooring comes to rescue.

You can find it in many different, designs patterns and styles such as natural stone, hardwood, ceramic tile. Actually you can almost find an endless design option with this flooring. One of the most popular styles out there is the faux wood grain because it strongly resembles hardwood, and only a careful inspection actually reveals that it's instead vinyl. Also when it comes to faux hardwood, it can easily imitate cherry, ash or bamboo.

 Basically if you have seen any flooring of any materials so far, you can be sure that it is very easy to find a good imitation of it in vinyl plank flooring. The imitation is so realistic that it's very difficult to tell apart the real thing from the faux vinyl.

Vinyl Plank Flooring Benefits

Vinyl plank flooring is more durable and very easy to clean and maintain. Installation is also very easy and the installation price will be but a fraction of how much you'd pay for real wood flooring to be installed in your home. While it might take you a couple of thousand dollars to install wood flooring, you can get away with less than $100 in installation price of a 15 inch square room.

An additional benefit is the fact that it really looks the part, and due to the many different styles available nowadays, you can easily find the perfect style and model that will perfectly match with the rest of your room and furniture.

It is a very durable material and it's not easy to scratch it, unlike hardwood which is notoriously prone to scratching and staining. Vinyl can truly take a lot of abuse. This is why it is often times use in many commercial buildings where we know the type of traffic such a flooring can get every day.

The top layer is water resistant, which makes is perfect to install it in the kitchen, bathroom, garage, laundry room, basement, or any area of the home that can be easily prone to moisture or to water spills, something that hardwood is again very easy to destroy with.

It is also the perfect flooring for people that have allergies since mites and microbes can not hide inside the sheet vinyl flooring like the can do easily in hardwood flooring. Also a simply mopping every week will keep this flooring free of any surface bacteria.

Vinyl Plank Flooring Installation

Installation is quite easy compared to other flooring materials. Here are the main steps to do it properly.

1. Remove any baseboards and thresholds that are on the floor so you can effectively measure the flooring for how much material to purchase. Always make sure to purchase a bit more than you actually need.
2. Strip the current flooring, unless you have a very smooth floor surface that is solid (such as cement). Also clean your subfloor to be indeed smooth and without any bumps on it, so the vinyl can easily adhere to the sub-floor.
3. If you have any cracks in the existing flooring using some compound to patch them up. Allow enough time to dry before laying down your new vinyl plank flooring, whether be it sheet vinyl flooring or vinyl tiles.
4. Start from one corner of the room. Simply peel off the self-adhesive backing of the vinyl plank flooring and make sure to link the very first plank the right way. Every other plank will be laid down according to the first, so you want to get this first step right.
5. Lay an entire plank down from one end of the room to the next one.
6. Start the second plank and use a vinyl tile cutter to cut the vinyl plank in half in order to start with the second part.
7. For an interesting effect you can easily alternate between a full plank and a half plank.
8. When you get to the other end you might find empty spaces so you need to cut just the right size of the plank to fill in the empty place.
9. When all the planks are on the floor, use a floor roller to make sure that the adhesive has nicely bonded on the sub-floor and it will not come off.
10. Put back any thresholds and baseboards that you have previously replaced.