How To Fix Long Gaps In Flooring! (Laminate, Vinyl LVP & Engineered Wood Floors) | DIY TIP & TRICK

on this episode i'm going to be showing you how to fix those long gaps on your laminate vinyl plank flooring or lvp or engineered wood flooring if the gap is located on the long side of the plank so stay tuned [Music] welcome to fix's house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe and notification bell so you could always be in tune on diys how-to videos and product reviews that i do within this channel today's episode is a special request by a fellow subscriber who is asking me how to fix these gaps when the gap is on the length or the long side of the plank i know i did a video already on how to fix gaps on the short side where the two planks meet from end to end if you want to check out that video i'll leave it on the link right on the top side we're gonna use this pretty much some of the same techniques so in this episode i'm gonna be showing you some few tips and tricks on how to fix these gaps okay so just a quick explanation on why this happens on your flooring this is vinyl plank flooring or what you can call luxury vinyl plank lvp is a floating floor meaning that it's not glued to the subfloor or it's not nailed down few laminate products lvp and engineered wood floors are this type where it floats on top of the floor and it tends to shift whatever direction expansion and contraction happens on your flooring that's why we keep it floating and we leave those quarter inch gaps all around the border well over time you're going to have movement and obviously if you have kids like me they tend to run around play with their cars they go back and forth and over time leave these many gaps right here which will tend to separate little by little which will cause a domino effect and cause the other adjacent flooring to separate as well you have two ways that they will separate they'll either be on the long side but the most common ones that tend to separate is on the short side of the plane i did here is i got two by fours that are close to the same length of the vinyl plank that we have same thing here i went and cut two of the same sizes make sure that the bottom portion is nice and clean and then we're going to apply double-sided tape on here you can put double-sided tape on this whole run what i'm going to do is i'm just going to cut into sections right here same thing on the other side to save material but if you have enough double-sided tape why not go for it okay so i'm going to apply double sided right here section right here and a section right here so unfortunately i ran out of double-sided tape i might have to just use half of this so i'm gonna cut that in half like so and i'm gonna have to move this on this side now flip this over put it on one end and you want to try to do it as close to the edge you don't want to make it too far you just want to put like about a half inch to an inch same thing here now before you put any pressure on this you don't want to stick it all the way through we're going to be using these bar clamps so you can actually make little pieces of wood it doesn't have to be this wide like this 2x4 if you do use little pieces of wood to do this it might work but it's not might not be as effective and you might be able to get away by using these smaller bar clamps but in this case as you can see this smaller bar clamps won't meet from end to end like what you see here so what i'm going to have to use i'll be using this larger bar clamps right here if you want to know where i got these bar clamps i'll leave it on the description down below check these out but either or you can use these but again the bigger bar clamps will be a lot more powerful when you try to close these gaps up i'm gonna do is you're gonna try to position this like so where you want it so in this case i want it like this so i'm gonna arrange my bar clamps to go on this direction all right just like that now that i've set it to where i want it this is where we can start putting pressure on this like so to make the two by four stick i'm gonna put my body weight on top of here because that's what we need to make contact okay and then we're just gonna clamp this down and see how it moves nice so you don't wanna close this up too much um just leave it where it is you don't want to try to close it because you're gonna have to level out like what i mentioned on the other side plank is gonna shift on a tilt okay if you clamp this up it's gonna on the other side it's gonna tilt up this is gonna tilt down so you're just gonna slowly leave it on this position and let's go to the other side because now it is lopsided okay so now let's move on to the other side you can see the movement and then just try to close it up like here okay see that so what you're going to do sometimes when it's a little harder to do you're going to try to tap it along here so that you can get that tongue to go inside that groove or whichever direction it is what you can do now is loosen this up okay and we can keep this here and then we're going to try to move this on the middle it's all about what pattern you want to go to you want to go this side that side middle this side this side middle make it um a pattern or you can go middle side side it's depend it all it's all up to you and i'm gonna close it up from there so there's a little bit of movement in the middle notice how i'm just you know i'm clamping this bar clamp slowly and then once that's done i'm going to release it put it back here clamp it on the side and now i'm going to move on to the left side well my left side and then just close it up from there now you probably understand why i did a long two by four piece about the same length of the planks it's because that for example if you use a small piece let's just say this is a scrap piece you put your your double-sided tape two of these you put right here right here you clamp it now you're gonna have to take that off and move it and to the to the right take that off move it to the middle and so forth by the time you're doing that your to your double sided tape is pretty much worn out dirty now you got to go get a clean rag and clean up that double sided tape and repeat with this technique where you just got two long two by fours notice how easy it is to move these clamps back and forth without having to do any of that and here is the status so far if you guys want to see it let me zoom in notice how it's slowly closing in there i know it doesn't look as much like there's things that happened but look at that it's starting to close little by little already another tip i'm a little i'm a 175 pounds the clamping force on this i do not know it's a little strong so if you can have a second person to stand here with you while you do this and put at and add more weight to push this down while you're clamping even better another reason why this planks might not fully close all the way you want to look at other adjoining columns or rows that you have for your planks and some of them have gaps as well like what you see here you will have to go and close this as well try to do that so i know it's a little bit tedious going back and forth but that's one of the best ways i could think of to close these gaps we're gonna go and try to put um move this go on this side do the same thing here close that up and then go to the other side as well see where that gap is try to close that up and once those make full contact then we can start moving this puzzle piece forward because those are the hindrances that we have this one and that side from making this fully closed on this side took out the 2x4 on this end you can still see that there's a minimal gap there what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this two two by fours and move it on this end so i can close this gap up let's try to clamp this side down put a little bit more see that gap is gone there and if we look at the gap that we're we're originally trying to close which was the one right here the gap there there's a little tiny bit left but it's a lot better than what we were working at before if i can show you the before now it's very normal for the joints to to be to have a gap like that now it's easy to close that up wipe this area first wipe your suction cup tool place it on this end and just tap this see that i know the suction cups moves but it did close up that gap but the same thing that you did on this side you'll repeat the same thing on the other side notice that once this closed up it pretty much followed through and it closed up right there given there's a little bit of tiny gap right there but it's way better than what it looked before so the main takeaways of this video is pretty much using these two by fours cutting them in the same length of the plank and pretty much using the double sided tape friends what i could have done better i wish i did was i wish i had enough double-sided tape because pull it pulling these planks out and putting replacing them and repositioning them in different places will wear off your double-sided tape and it will even tear it apart you take your time and you use the right equipment you can accomplish in getting these gaps closed up you might not get a 100 but you will get it closed up to look better than what it looked before so if you have some suggestions and tips and tricks that you want to add leave it in the description down below let's share with the community let's have a conversation with everybody and let's help each other out because this channel is all about helping each other including myself um again i'm not perfect if i leave something out or if i missed something let me know in the comments let's all be respectful thank you so much friends i value your time and i appreciate every love and support that you guys give me please hit that big thumbs up subscribe notification bell and i'll see you friends on the next video [Music]

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 446,311

Keywords: how to fix gaps in vinyl plank flooring, how to fix gaps in luxury vinyl plank, luxury vinyl plank, how to fix gaps in engineered wood, engineered wood, vinyl plank flooring, flooring tips and tricks, hardwood flooring, how to install vinyl plank flooring, fix gaps on flooring, floor gaps, flooring fix, home renovation, home repair, floor repair, flooring how to, bathroom flooring, flooring gap, house renovation, DIY flooring, How to fix long gaps in flooring!

Id: B27CvpPkpck

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022