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Rick and Britt’s floor
Hi Joe – thanks for your help
We’re getting ready to install Corelux LVP in a one-story house. We’re removing carpet now.
Britt made a floor plan. Let’s see if the scan comes through ok. The front door of the house is at the bottom (to the west); bedrooms are to the left (to the north); living room at the top (to the east).
A small hallway connects to three bedrooms and one bath. Based on your videos (thank you), I think I need to start measuring my layout from the hall, which runs mostly north to south. So I think I want my planks to run north to south as well. I think I want to start in the northeast corner of the living room and work toward the front door.
I have concerns about working around the kitchen wall. We have a gas stove. Is there a way to install plank up to the stove, but not under it? I don’t really want to have to move the stove.
I’m hoping you have videos about working with diagonal walls. We have a lot of those!
Thanks
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17 Replies
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Great suggestions. Thanks. We’re definitely going to pull the gas stove out. And we’ll follow your suggestion to run the planks east-west and start at the south wall. We definitely can see how that lets us “work forward” through almost the entire house.
Your version of our floor plan was almost perfect. The only real mistake was the doorway to the master bath is … how to say this … you need to turn it 90º. When you enter the bathroom, you face north. (In your drawing, when you enter the bathroom, you face west.)
I have some other questions for you, but I have to run out for a few hours, so I’ll send those along with some photos when I return.
Britt, by the way, grew up in Faribault … she says hi to a fellow Minnesotan
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Just remembered one big question. Where would you start measuring for your layout? I’m thinking it could be in the front entry area. So I’d chalk a line basically from the front door to the east wall of the living room.
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Joe, you’re incredible! Thanks for spending so much time with us.
Couple of things.
1. We live in Lincoln City, Oregon, right on the Pacific coast. The weather can be pretty harsh here, though it’s mostly wind and rain that cause trouble. It doesn’t get very cold … which is why a lot of Minnesotans end up here … and they don’t go back! We do get sand tracked into the house, so I was glad to see your product reviews do a sand test.
2. We are completing “demo” work first. We will get the last of the old carpet out today. We found a couple of spots on the particle board under the carpet that had water damage. This is a 30-year-old house. We put new siding (and insulation, etc.) on the outside in 2018 and a new roof in 2019, so we no longer have water intrusion, but we do want to correct some of the bad spots. Britt was putting Kilz on the spots this morning. We think that’s all we need to do because the boards are all dry and solid-feeling.
3. We do plan to put padding on the floor before we lay the planks. (The product is called Quietwalk Versa from LL Flooring.) If we mark the floor with chalk lines, how do we transfer that information to the padding?
4. I’m sending a photo of our gas stove, which sits in the northwest corner of the living room. It has a hearth pad which was sitting on top of the carpet. We have cut the carpet away, but you can see in the photo that there’s still carpet under the hearth pad. I’m thinking I can cut a lot of that carpet out with an oscillating saw (which I bought based on your suggestion). Then we can slide our vinyl plank under the pad at least an inch or so. Will we want to do anything else to make that area look good? Will it need a trim piece of some sort?
5. The kitchen, the front entry area, and the room we call the “breakfast nook” (which is the room on the south wall where we still start laying the plank) all have linoleum. This is the original 30-year-old flooring. We plan to put the vinyl plank right on top. We will put the padding only on the particle board. Is it ok to just have the padding butt up against the linoleum and then put the planks on top? Or is there some other step we need to do where the padding and linoleum meet?
I’m sending a photo of the edge of the linoleum. In the first shot, you can see some of our water damage (from a leak in the kitchen sink plumbing a couple of years ago). In the second shot, you can see the spot coated with Kilz.
Thanks for all your help. We think we will start marking lines before the end of the day today.
Rick and Britt
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Forgot to mention. Yes, I see why we should start the layout in the small hall that connects the bedrooms and the bathroom. And why it’s important to account for those three doorways right from the start. There’s actually a fourth doorway to account for because there’s a linen closet across from that first bathroom. Your drawing just shows a weird closed-off space. That’s actually a closet off the hall.
Rick
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Darn. I probably confused things by referring to our “gas stove” in the living room. I should have called that a “gas fireplace.” We do have a gas cooking stove in the kitchen. That’s the one I asked you about earlier. But it’s the gas fireplace in the living room that has the hearth pad that is sitting on the carpet. (The gas fireplace, by the way, heats the entire house. We have electric wall heaters in every room but we never use those.)
Rick
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Trying to add pix. When I tried yesterday, the process didn’t seem to work quite right. (I think I didn’t wait long enough for the photos to load.)
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We’re on our way! Thanks for your help. And the confidence you’ve instilled.
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Looks great! See, you go this!!!
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Progress report. Lots of work, but it’s going ok. Britt’s really doing most of the work because I had to do something else yesterday. The big moment was when she lined up planks in the kitchen to see if they would meet the ones she installed in the living room. Bingo! She also moved the refrigerator (by herself!) and last night we got the floor down under that and moved the fridge back into place. By then, it was almost 9 p.m., so we called it quits. Today, we pull the dishwasher (which is 30 years old, so we’re getting a new one) … and maybe the gas stove.
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I love it! You both are doing amazing work, but Brit, my hat is off and tilted to you! Well done girl!
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We’re moving right along. We don’t have any questions for you, but that’s because you did such a good job getting us started in the right direction. And your videos have helped us through some rough spots.
I told you that we bought a new dishwasher. The guy who came to install it said he did flooring for about 8 years and our job looks better than some professional ones he’s seen. We asked him if there was anything we needed to know about pulling the gas stove out, so when he finished the dishwasher, he went ahead and pulled that out for us himself. Made sure we knew how to put it back in, so that went great.
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