How To Install Luxury Vinyl Tile

hey guys I'm Tony today I'm gonna show you how to give your kitchen a new look by installing a new floor luxury vinyl tile is an upgrade from this your standard vinyl flooring it's really easy to install plus it's very durable now you can go ahead and put this in pretty much any room of your house just check with your manufacturer's instructions so the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to measure our room length times width so we get the square footage so we know how much material to get now if you have something like let's say this island in the way don't worry about it too much now we've already go ahead and picked up our material but when you pick up your material you're going to want to make sure you bring it in the house put it in the room let it acclimate for at least 48 hours before installing it now you can go ahead and install this luxury vinyl tile over an existing flooring as long as it's smooth in a relatively good condition our floor today is got a little bit of a texture and as you can see it's got some holes in it so we're gonna go ahead and remove it to remove it we're gonna start by taking utility knife and scribing along our cabinets and then do the same along our baseboards we're not gonna be removing our baseboards because once our flooring is all down we're going to go ahead and lay down a shoe mold to cover up the edges alright now that we've cut around the perimeter of our kitchen we're gonna go ahead and cut down the middle and start removing our vinyl now our vinyl we're lucky enough where it really isn't glued down in the middle it was only glued around the edges so it's gonna cut coming up real easy just pull it up with your hands and a five-in-one tool or you can use a pry bar now if you have glue underneath all the vinyl you're gonna have to cut it into smaller pieces and pry it up and that needs a scraper to get this much glue off as possible [Music] I've cut the flooring at a three to four foot pieces you don't really want to cut them any bigger than that it'll be too heavy to carry and now we're gonna move our appliances out of the way so we could remove the vinyl underneath you might have to move your appliance is a few times if you don't have a separate place to store them alright now that we have all our old flooring up now we have to go ahead and check and make sure that our subfloor is all clean and level free of any defects any nail heads any screws we got really lucky today here with ours you know it's a newer house so it really didn't have any issues if you do have nail heads or screw heads you want to either pull those out or drive them back down in either's fine as long as the floor ends up being smooth I also want to check any seams that we have check them for you just want to make sure that they're smooth you might have to scrape them down there a little bit higher you can use a belt sander to knock them down our biggest issue here with ours is there's a lot of glue around the edges of our kitchen now we're gonna scrape those down you know just using a scraper we're going to get all the glue off but we just want to try and get it as smooth as possible and now we're gonna fill in a low spots with a cement base level or this one just mixes with water [Music] you spread it with the trawl and let it cure we're spreading this pretty thin so it's gonna take about 30 to 60 minutes to fully cure a level floor is important for the tile to adhere properly now that we've come to this door we need to check that our clearance is enough room for our material to slide underneath it in our case we have more than enough room if there's not enough room you're gonna have to cut the door down although over here our side casing there's not enough room for our floor knee to get underneath it so we're gonna cut it we don't have to worry about it too much here at our base molding because we're gonna be adding a shoe molding after the project's complete so to do this we're gonna take an actual piece of the material we're gonna be putting down this is going to give us the exact same height for when you cut it and we're also gonna use as a guide and to be doing this we're going to be using this oscillating tool which is a great tool to have to get in tight spaces so what we're gonna do is you're gonna take your piece of flooring move it up next to the side casing like I said you're just gonna use it as a guide and cut away [Music] go ahead and clean out any debris with the putty knife and the towel should fit underneath the casing next we're gonna vacuum this floor of any dust and debris this floor has to be really clean now back to our areas where we have that excess glue we scrape them down as good as possible that as much as we could get off it but there's still a little bit more now we're gonna take some level or patch and skim and skim it across the top of it I'm gonna take my putty knife go ahead and run it down the edge here you know add it a little liberally so we're gonna skim coat it off next we're gonna go ahead and take our trawl and smooth it out now if you get any on the baseboards just make sure you wipe it off before it dries and then let it cure following the directions also it's a good idea to use a flooring primer now this flooring primer is specific just for floors it's not your usual paint primer this primer is gonna seal our sub floors and this is gonna help our tile adhere to the subfloor now that we've let our primer dry overnight we're gonna go and inspect our tiles we want to make sure they're free of any defects they haven't been damaged at all ours look pretty good right now so we're gonna go and get started on our layout to get your straight starting line mark the center of two opposing walls or cabinets and snap a chalk line on the floor do the same on the other walls or cabinets to form a cross and check that it's squirt now you're gonna measure to the center of the starting wall subtract the manufacturer's expansion gap and the width of a tile then Mark this distance at the ends snap a line between to get a straight line near the wall in our case because of the layout of our room we're going to marked our center line in between these two walls now we can take our measurement off of this wall come over here measuring off that same wall put our mark and chalk our line for our center line so we're gonna start our first row full tiles here in the kitchen where the kitchen meets the living room because this is the spot in the kitchen where our floor is gonna be the most visible over here we have this transition strip that we have to deal with and I've simply taken this five in one tool lightly pried up on it just enough for this tile to slip underneath now this manufacturer requires an eighth inch gap around the perimeter of the entire room for expansion we're dealing with an 18 inch tile here so we want to slip a quarter inch underneath there we know it more will still have that eighth inch gap under there for our expansion joint so our 18 inches we're gonna mark 17 and 3/4 off this end of the transition strip and we're going to come over here mark 17 and 3/4 again snap a chalk line between these two marks to get your starting line it's smart to do a dry layout to see how the tile ends up against the walls if you have less than half a tile with at the walls shift the layout lines a little bit after we did our dry layout we found we need to move our centerline over just a little bit so we went and chalk the new line for that and now we're ready to start laying the tile before we start laying a tile that's one really important thing you need to know about this is that there's arrows on the back of every tile we need to make sure that those arrows are constantly going in the same direction throughout the entire floor installation so with that said you can peel off our contact paper off the back I'm going to go a little slowly this stuff is really sticky once it's off you wanna just guard it right away excessive builds up and you can get slippery now remember in which way your arrows went I'll take your first tile in our case we're sliding it underneath this transition piece lining up our centerline along with our starting line once it's in place and press it down firmly with your hands and then you can just continue down the line always remember and that those arrows are going in the same direction once these tiles make contact with the subfloor you really can't move them around much alright now we've reached a wall and it's time for us to make our first cut now to do this we're gonna take the tile that we're actually gonna lay down there and then remember flip it over make sure the arrows are going in the same direction and we're just gonna place it with the paper still on it over the last tile we installed then we're gonna take another tile we're gonna slide it up against the wall and then we're gonna pull it back in eighth of an inch leaving that expansion gap and we're going to take our pencil and we're going to draw a line down our tile that we're gonna cut so I'm gonna take your straight edge and you're gonna make a few nice light cuts you don't have to press real hard making sure they're straight we're gonna go ahead simply they'll snap right off you know if your perfect sized piece will fit right in there continue installing your tiles making sure that all your seams are tight and there's no gaps if you have to cut around a corner mark the tile and cut I like to use a pair of snips [Music] you could also wear kneepads to make the installation a lot easier on your knees [Music] here's another way to lay the tiles you can use spacers in between and especially formulated grout to give it a more traditional look right for our next cut it's gonna be this angle cut we're gonna take our square we're gonna line it up on our seam of this tile that's already installed and we're gonna slide it up against the wall get our measurement here which is 10 we're gonna transfer that measurement over here subtracting 1/8 for expansion gap so 9 and 7/8 and we're gonna do the same thing up here lining up on the edge here sliding against the wall 10 and a quarter subtracting 1/8 gives us 10 and 1/8 put a mark here simply connect those two lines take our utility knife scribe along that line dry-fit it looks pretty good after the whole floor is completely installed you're gonna take a hundred pound roller and roll the entire floor in several directions this will ensure a good bond between the flooring and the subfloor next we're gonna add some shoe molding you're gonna want to avoid mopping the floor for a few days to let the adhesive set up now that we've got our room put back together this place has got a whole new look thanks to luxury vinyl tile this project took us about two days to do it's a great project for pretty much any DIY er so give it a shot and if you want more great ideas and how-tos go to lowes.com/howto [Music]

Channel: Lowe's Home Improvement

Views: 1,336,318

Keywords: lowes, lowe's, how to, how-to, diy, home improvement, how to install vinyl tile, vinyl tile installation, appletv, installing vinyl tile, luxury vinyl tile installation, installing luxury vinyl tile

Id: CgTlblmjE_4

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 08 2018