Install Vinyl Plank or Laminate WITHOUT LOSING Your Mind | Here's How

oh so that's how you do that fear is a liar fear is a liar why do i say fear is a liar i will tell you why i say that because i've helped thousands of people be able to go and install their plank on their own and a lot of them had fear that they weren't going to be able to handle that installation they feared screwing up even if you screw up think of it like this it's one plank maybe two maybe it's a dozen planks who knows but most of the time anyway you're going to be able to take a plank that you screw up a cut on and use it somewhere else so it's not really a screw up let's say you install an entire room you realize that maybe you screwed something up you can take that plank apart and put it back together again so there is nothing to fear and also i feel like i'm i've got this video that you're watching right now so packed full of things to help with your installation you have no reason to fear this one board this scrap piece of plank that i have in my hand is gonna save you hours on your plank installation and i call it a cheater board it's a cheater board and i'm gonna show you inside this video later on exactly how you can make one of these cheater boards and how it's going to help you so here let's watch i like to take the doors off because it makes it a lot easier to do your installation and you'll be able to cut the jams a lot easier and when you're installing into closets and through bedrooms it's going to be a lot easier for you to have those doors off now carpet when you are pulling this up you want to get all the carpet up off of the tack strip around the entire room and if you have any closets that are larger like walk-in closets just separate those it's going to make it easier for you especially with the backing not scratching the paint or the door jambs now cutting the back of this carpet is going to be a lot easier also plus you're not going to cut into the pad where it's going to be a bunch of small chunks that you have to tear out roll that carpet up into a small manageable chunk tape it up and it'll be easy to carry out of the house now this is a stand-up scraper that you can buy you just slide it underneath the pad and it's going to take most of those staples up with the pad making the tail really easy for you now as far as trim goes if you're not installing quarter ound i would recommend just pulling your trim off and what i do is i just get started in like an outside corner right there i wiggle the pry bar all the way down the wall until it gets out enough where i can get a good bite with the pry bar and not put a hole in the sheetrock and the nails are easy by just to get off by just bending them back and forth and they'll snap right off now we have a situation here where we have to remove a vinyl and a quarter inch subfloor we have to cut around cabinets with an oscillating saw well here i'll talk to you more about it you can feel it when you cut through that vinyl and then through the subfloor you can usually feel it give and then hits the next subfloor if you don't feel that you just want to know that this is only a quarter inch thick you don't want to be sending this blade down the floor into the floor a half inch because now you're cutting into your other subfloor now i like to cut the vinyl floor in sections using a circular saw to find the depth you just want to put the saw on top of the floor that you're cutting and then drop the blade down to the floor you're cutting too do a test cut and then just cut a chunk out so you can make sure that it releases easy and to check to make sure you're only skimming the floor underneath now again i like to just cut this in three by four sections once you get to a wall you won't be able to get all the way so an oscillating saw really does the trick on being able to finish those cuts all the way to the wall then just take a broom and sweep every time you make a pass and this is going to help you control dust because you can see even with the vacuum you're still throwing dust up in the air now i use a three foot pry bar to get underneath deep underneath these sections that we're cutting and you can get some really good leverage still so i would just recommend that you would get one of these bars now you're going to have a lot of staples to deal with you can hammer these down underneath toe kicks you can use an oscillating saw with a bi-metal blade to cut these staples right off you can also use a pliers just grab the head of the staple and then just rock your pliers back now obviously that's going to be a little slower then you want to check the floor for dips and i'm going to show you right now how to find those level was flat there and flat there but there was a dip there you would just mark a line and then if it still went right there you'd mark the line where it ended and then if it started coming in right here then you would just mark where it ends and then if right there it was flat then you'd come straight across and then you do the same thing this way so if i bring it back here and now it's all flat all the way i know that this is the area that i need to fill in and then just kind of figure out how deep it is by using a pencil and marking it with your another pencil then you just measure to see what it was and if it's a quarter inch or if it's less just use that size notch of troll that you have so what i mean by a notched trawl is we're using a tile trawl here now trawls come anywhere from an eighth inch all the way up to an inch um as far as tile trawls go and what i do is i fill in the thickness that i needed now our dip here was about 3 8 of an inch so we used a 3 8 notch troll here not and now we're using thinset you can see some ridges that are left behind we'll have to come back once this dries and fill in the rest of that but you can see how easy this is to screed with a straight 2x4 and again we're using thinset here a modified thinset that has latex in it i prefer to use thinset but now you can decide for yourself now we have some smaller areas where we had some dips that we filled and we used a different product called henry's 549 you can find that at home depot or lowe's now for you guys who have concrete slabs out there this is a cup grinder you should be able to rent this you know you just attach a vacuum to it and this is what you can use to grind any humps in your concrete slab that you might find now i also want to talk to you about furniture and show you the beautiful thing about plank is that you can work around furniture in a room you can move it to one side install the plank and then once you get up to the furniture you just move it to the other side you can see how we did this in this living room this dining room and now in this kitchen you can see we have this fridge here so what we are doing right now is we're installing the plank where the fridge goes and then we're going to move that back into place before we finish the rest of this plank now here's a cool little tool that you can check to see if your rental store has we'll slide these under the fridge so they go all the way under plug these in [Music] i just flick this switch now you can see how handy this would be to have now go check your rental store and if they don't have one i would just tell them about it and recommend that they get one because i know many people would benefit from this now this is a power jam saw something else you can rent now this is something that we used to use before they came out with oscillating saws you can see when you cut your jamb that you want to be able to slide that plank underneath freely and then it goes deep under so get all that out of underneath that jamb you can see the gap that that power jam saw leaves that's one of the reasons why i don't like to use that you can also use a hand saw but it's going to be difficult to get into a tight area so an oscillating saw is really the way to go you can make precise cuts with it and get into tight areas really good tool to get i'm measuring the hallway right now to try to find a center point i got 47 inches so i got 47 inches here and i measure the hallway in a couple of different spots just to see how straight it is you can see i got 47 inches there so if i want to divide that in half to get the center of this hallway i come up with 23 and a half i want to stop right now and talk to you about why i'm measuring the hallway okay so now the hallway is like the center hub of everything in your house right now i don't mean that it's in the center of the house i could be anywhere inside the house but it's usually the hub of everything it connects everything together like the bedrooms the bathroom laundry room stairways living rooms family rooms kitchens dining rooms it just it's always usually the hub to everything so it's nice to use that as a tool to decide some things okay for example that using the hallway is really going to be a good a good way for you to decide plank direction you should run the plank the long way down the hallway for a few reasons it looks nicer it looks a heck of a lot nicer when you run it the long way down and you have the same size piece running down both sides of that hallway man does that pop and look nice it's going to look professionally done you're going to love it you're going to be proud of yourselves everybody who comes and sees it is going to love it the other thing is it really gives the hallway a lot more strength when you run the plank the long way down the hallway now some of you are gonna are in a situation where you have an l-shaped hallway or you have multiple hallways in your house i would just focus on the hallway that's most important the one that's the most visual the one you're gonna see the most and use that as your as your install as your point where you're going to base your installation off of now the other thing is is i like to control where that plank is going to land inside the doorways going into these other rooms the reason why is because i don't use transitions okay now i know some of you are going to say but joe the manufacturers state you must use transitions in doorways to break the plank right i've been doing this for 15 years professionally installing and i can tell you i've never had an issue but if i was to have an issue where it buckled or bubbled somewhere i'd easily be able to take out my oscillating saw which is one of the best tools that you can buy anyway and cut a channel out of that plank right underneath the door and add a t-mold boom problem solved so why wouldn't i use transitions i will leave it into your hands on what you want to do now i like to control the plank then where it's going to end in that doorway because if it ends somewhere right in that doorway inside maybe in the door jam it's going to be a lot easier to move into other rooms if you have to take a plank and wrap it around both sides of a door jamb that could be a sticky situation and you could be working on just those couple of planks for a few hours you don't want to do that you want to try to avoid it now sometimes it's not always avoidable but it is going to be for majority of the doors that you're going to go through the other thing is is almost 99 of the time when i base my layout off the hallway everything else in the house falls into place nicely so that is why i'm measuring the hallway so here let's watch now i make a couple of marks on the floor at the 23 and a half inches in two different spots of the hallway we're going to extend a chalk line across those two lines i'm gonna pull up on this chalk line and then release and get a nice solid line all right so if you come down here with the camera you'll see i'm pretty close to being on the joint on the line there right there and then down here same thing right i have the hallway centered right now so i'm gonna have a small piece on both sides i don't like that i don't like that i want to grow that piece bigger so i need to do a half a plank i can move this a half a plank over now this is the only math that you really need to do everything else can just be either written down as you go or you um can just use your tape measure and i'll show you that so seven and a half if you take seven and a half and you divide that by two you're going to get three and three quarters okay so my plank is seven and a half inches wide and that is why i'm dividing mine by two and getting three and three quarters your plank is going to be different probably than mine you're probably gonna have five inches six inches whatever that is just get the measurement of your plank you divide that in half and now we're going to move that over the half a plank i want to move this line three and three quarter inches that way that's the half a plank now i'm going to do this real quick i'm just going to draw my lines and then i'm going to show you so that you really understand what i'm trying to do here if i move this over a half a plank which is right there about now that is what i mean you see how i grew both sides if i was going to leave this like this it's something that i want to avoid but this stuck out an inch right there and that's where the seam was i would then have to wrap this plank around both sides of this jam at one time and i really don't want to do that because it's a pain in the butt now by me moving this over the half a plank now my plank is going to end up being about halfway in the door whoa joe whoa i want to stop right there so i can clarify this moment that i should have done in the video but i'm going to do it right now so it i measured from the line three and three quarters to this side of the line and i made my mark you've seen that you can do it on either side of the line so i could have measured to this side of the line the three and three quarters of an inch i just want to stop and clarify that because either way either side of that line you're still going to get the same result and you'll see the result right now so here let's watch okay so now that we know that i'm going to move this over a half a plank i'm going to make a mark here and i'm going to make a mark down there and then we're going to snap this line and we're going to extend it throughout the living room okay what we're trying to do here is we're trying to start our plank over here and this reference line is what we're trying to get snapped all the way across this room super easy to do and by doing this we're going to be able to start where we need to start to be able to control where we want our plank to land inside the hallway you want to get yourself one of these string lines because it's going to help you be able to stretch that across the entire part of the floor and you're not going to leave any chalk on the floor and once you're ready to snap a line then you'd switch back to your chalk line so what we're going to do with the dry string line is we're going to bring it across both of those marks stretch it all the way across the house line it up on those two marks that you made and then you can slide your marker underneath the string down here and you'll be able to have your mark in the floor on where you need to snap your line to now you might not have three people to help you to see if this goes across these lines so down here on this first mark what you can do is you can take a screw and stick it into the center of that mark let a little bit of that screw head stick out so that you can take the end of the string line tie a loop on it put it on the screw so it will swivel off of that screw and so once you get that mark down there then you're going to just snap this line all the way across and now you have your reference line now all from here it's really super easy to get our layout going and get started and get this vinyl plank done now i want to show you here real quick what we're trying to do here i want to put down three or four rows of plank to establish a good solid foundation and to determine where those are to be positioned we want to measure away from our chalk line that we snapped on the floor a certain amount of planks and so i just extend my tape measure over 10 different planks that i put together on the floor to come up with that amount that we need to be away from that chalk line now i'm just measuring the face of the plank i'm not including the tongue or the groove so just the face okay so i mentioned earlier that this is where we are going to start and now we have this line right here that we have snapped so that we know exactly where our plank is going to land now we need to know exactly where we're going to start so it does land there so simply is all we do is we lay out 10 boards just like i showed here and i'm showing in the video now what we want to do is we want to get this line transferred into this room so it runs all the way across it so we can measure from that line to these planks to make sure we get it straight and that we start in the exact spot that we need so that it lands in this hallway now this is really simple is all you do is you lay out your 10 boards like i'm showing here and in the video and you want to just measure these boards you don't need to even write anything down just keep moving your tape measure so if you measure from here to here and it's 70 inches you start at the 70 inches now over here and measure out again until you get to a point where you want to put your line in here i would just figure somewhere in here so just quickly measure from here into here anywhere say it's 10 feet we'll just figure out how many planks that would be closest to so for instance i'm just going to throw out a number let's say my planks are 7 inches and i want to go out 20 planks that's 140 inches so i'd measure from here out 140 inches make a mark same thing down here from here out 140 inches now you could take that dry string line method that i showed you stretch it across so you can get your next mark over here and then you would just snap this line all the way across now you have your reference line to measure from this line to your planks to get this straight now both vinyl plank and laminate have a locking system there's the female side and the male side otherwise known as the tongue and the groove you want to be sure that you stick the tongue side against your starting wall now i like to lay out the plank to get going here make sure i don't have any patterns that are lining up with each other and then once i get going to put that together i'm going to pull that row out in front of the vents that are in the floor i like to leave at least one row out and i'll talk to you more about that later you also want to be sure that you don't have too small of a piece so i needed to adjust this over a little bit so i could get a larger piece now i'm going to talk about this more later but i i reverse the plank when i'm marking my cuts i put the groove towards the starting wall now to mark my plank and now i'll go and cut that and i'll be able to install this in here and again i'll talk to you more about this in a little bit i get asked a lot why aren't you leaving an expansion joint well if the sheetrock is up off the floor and your flooring slides under there's a half inch right there that you're gonna get now not all plank comes with an attached pad so if your plank does not come with an attach pad and even though your manufacturer says that you don't need one i'd recommend that you put one down and you can see in these videos you're going to occasionally see the blue pad that i'm using now this is quiet walk it's a really good dense underlayment that you put underneath your plank and i would just highly recommend that you use that it's going to help with sound deadening that's like one of the most important things about you about vinyl plank or even laminate that you want to have when you're walking across it so it really helps with the sound deadening also it's going to help with moisture so there's just a lot of benefits to using a pad so if your plank does not come with an attached pad i would highly recommend that you use one okay so we're going to continue to lay out our plank here now there's a couple of things that i'm keeping in mind like i said earlier i don't want the same pattern to line up and we're doing a random installation here meaning that there's no specific rhyme or reason to what we're doing with the butt joints we just don't want them to line up and we kind of want them to be a little bit away from each other so now i'm just going to continue on and i'm going to start putting these next few rows together so i can build a solid foundation and as you can see i'm just laying out now this next board that i have right here was the same exact pattern as the one before that so i'm going to move that out of the way and use that down the rows a little bit farther now you can take some piles of plank that are the same patterns just put them in a pile in different piles and then you can select from them and make sure that you're really controlling on where you're putting these patterns now as you can see i am putting this plank together with the cross joint the butt joint i put the butt joint in first and then i slide the long joint in and i'm using this tapping block here to help me with this now these tapping blocks are something that you can find online and i'll have a link i'm going to show you actually a little different one than the one that i'm using now the one that you see me using is actually an older one and it's not available anymore but they do make one now that is very comparable to that one it's really nice very heavy duty well priced and you're gonna wanna get that probably now you can see here i'm again reversing the plank marking my cut not using a tape measure here now you can get one of these cutters i do have this now i do this for living that's the reason why i have this cutter if you have laminate you can cut laminate with a jigsaw you don't need to buy an expensive cutter like this and vinyl plank most of that can be just cut with a utility knife and a speed square and we'll talk about more we'll talk more about that even a little later so now that we have our four rows done go ahead and grab a piece of plank and cut like some six inch scraps four inch would even work um just lay these out and you're gonna put one on each end and then you're gonna put one in each seam now you see i leave a couple rows out here this is exactly why i do it it makes it easy to come back later on and cut these in cut these last two rows in it's super easy to do it this way you get precise cuts don't have to worry about being short on the vents like i like to come out in front of the vent like you see avoid cutting those in the beginning you're going to get a solid floor by doing it this way now you want to take your your plank your rows that you just installed measure a certain amount of planks away like we talked about earlier in this video make sure you get your four rows perfectly straight now you're gonna go through you're gonna secure this floor with screws just screw it right down into the subfloor really gonna be way better than those cheap spacers that you get at home depot lowe's menards wherever you're going okay so now if you have a concrete subfloor what you can do is you can get yourself um a glue gun now i have a big glue gun here of course i have a big one i mean i do this for a living right so i have the big best one you don't need to get the biggest best glue gun you can go to walmart home depot lowe's wherever and buy a glue gun what's important is this glue stick that i'm going to share a link with you in the description below now that'll bring you to my home page and i'll show you where that is but you can see right here in the picture what it actually is going to look like now this glue stick is really nice because you can use this for a lot of things either securing the floor i even use this for gluing down transitions um so it's something that you um might want to even look at just for that but you just take it and you just want to put a squirt of glue on it the size of a hershey's kiss now i'm not talking the plank now imagine with me here okay imagination this is the concrete floor now you just want to take your scrap slide it into the joint of the other plank and then just set it down on that glue now about five minutes from now this is gonna be ready to go and it's gonna be secured like it was screwed to the floor now when you're all done you just pry it up and you'll scrape that off at the scraper the glue will come right off now if you have a pad that you have to put down on the floor just cut a square out where you need to glue it you can always tape that back in place with some packing tape clear packing tape is how i would do it now one more thing if you have a plank that has an attached pad on it like this does this one actually comes off really easy just pull that off before you glue that scrap down so that you make sure it stays now if you have a plank that the pad does not come off like that just leave it on that's going to be okay too so with all that being said that's how i would secure it if my floor was a concrete slab i'll slide this back end in and i slide it tight to the other laminate and now i lift up on it and i'll give it a lift and you can hear it click and then i just tap it down with my hand and it's in there nice and solid so slide it in click slide it flat down and then just push until it locks in and then you can just tap it down and now you want to make sure that you go through back down your rolling make sure there's not any gaps in there that it's all in there good right here i got a little gap you can see it's sticking up a little and that's all you do and what this is is this slides in back behind your laminate and then right here this metal thing right here is what you tap on to get the laminate to move that way this tapping block right here basically just helps you tap this when you have a little gap to get the joints to go together tight now i'm not beating on the floor with this i'm using it lightly and we'll show you some more on using this during the installation process here you want to point the tongue towards you so that it's in there backwards so this is the way it really goes in but you're flipping it backwards to get your mark and that's how i always mark mine i i don't use a tape measure very often at all now my cut on this side is the same thing i just have this piece then i'm going to reverse it so it's going the wrong way and you can see i still got my joint on there so that'll help me with my gap i know that that's an eighth inch so i just need to go a little shorter like an eighth inch more and so i'll just go shorter and i'm just eyeballing that now you might need to use a tape measure if you feel more comfortable with doing it that way but by the time you do about four or five six rows of this marking you're going to figure out exactly how to mark it so just keep going and if you need to use a tape measure then go ahead and use a tape measure i want you to look at this gap that i have right here and i'm already a couple rows in and i just noticed that i have that gap and this is where that bar comes in you can see that i just tapped it and it went and it closed it up now i just used this bar right here and i shoved it in there and i took one good whack now i want to make sure that i come down to the other side and i want to make sure that that row did not move everything else down there so that it's touching the wall or that there's not enough gap in the wall one of the things that you can do when you use that tapping block is stick a wedge of some sort in the other side so when you're tapping it that way that it won't push into the wall where you have to come back and tap it back okay so the plank you're seeing right here is called a drop and lock locking system now what you do is you stick the long part of the plank into the joint you slide it over to the butt joint you drop it down and then to lock it you hit it with a rubber mallet and that will lock it into place now this is a simple product to install not necessarily better than the other where you put the butt joint in first and then go into the other joint but it certainly is easier okay so i've got one more row to put in here before i get to this wall and what i'm gonna do is i'm actually going to figure now this row that goes in right here i'm going to figure that right now now i just take my cheater board and i'd start making my marks just come keep making my marks and then i'll come to the corner right here and i'll just figure i'll come out about a quarter inch and stay straight on this wall and i'll just draw my line right there so you can see there's my cut for this ro for this next row okay so i got this piece in so now basically i just take it after i cut it here now and stick it in get it in place and you can see all that fit in there this is the spot i'll use this pry bar click it in so now i can just slide this in and this one i can actually slide under this time so i'm gonna feel the wall and i'll pull it out a little bit i make my mark i'll come make sure i'm going to clear there i'll make a mark same thing on this side make sure i'm going to clear and i'll make another marks and i'll go and notch this out and i'll figure out my other cuts right now on this other part see if i can use this down there i can so i'm going to go and cut both these boards right now i didn't forget guys we're going to talk about the cheater board i'm just showing you a few clips here on how it works trust me i'm going to show you what you need to do to make one of these cheater boards [Applause] so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to put this board in before i put this row in and the reason why is because i want it to go in there easy and so what i do is i slide this board in where it's supposed to go and now i'll take this row and i'll start putting this in get this out of the way a little bit now i have this row in this is already slid under my jam there so i'm not going to have any issues getting it in now i'm going to start putting in this next row and this is just going to be a little bit of work to get it in there but it's really going to go pretty simple actually now i'm going to grab underneath the middle of this board or i can tap from that side but i lift up the middle and i keep that end down and that's how i'm going to get it to lock in there now i'll get it in place and this is where my tapping block comes in and now you see how nicely that's in and now what i can do because i already have this piece in i can just cut a piece that's going to fit in here and set it right on top of here and then just use my cheater board still so i can just set the board right on top of here now another method that you can use in these difficult areas which will come in handy for you throughout your installation is you can take the lip off of the groove here now what i do is i remove that lip and then the plank can slide into each other very easily you don't have to lift up at a slight angle like you normally do to get it to lock in now here's a small planing tool that you can use to remove this lip you can find this at any home improvement store or i have a link online you can also use a sharp chisel or a utility knife to cut the slip off now usually you just have to take one pass down the plank on both the butt joint and on the long joint but some planks take a little bit more you might need to take two maybe even three swipes depending on how thick that lip is now i planed this and i'm gluing it what i'm using this is a vinyl plank i'm using gorilla glue it's a clear gorilla glue it takes a little bit longer to dry but it gives you some working time and i was able to cut under this enough or i could slide this forward and while it was sitting under here then i glued i glued this and then i glued this and you can see i just put a little bead in there so it's not going to squirt out and now i'm just going to slide it together and then i'm going to tape it i'm kind of pressing it a little bit there's a little bit of a wave in this floor so i have to kind of work it into the joint then i just take some duct tape or blue tape if you want but duct tape looks a little better to vinyl playing [Music] just press down and pull press down again and rip okay i want to talk to you a little bit more about this gorilla glue now i like to use clear gorilla glue because it doesn't foam so it won't ooze out the joints later on like a normal gorilla glue will but what i need like to do is i like to just take a wet rag it's not dripping wet just moist wipe it down the groove before you apply the glue to it and then the plank that's on the floor just use um the same rag and wipe that part that's on the floor just to get it a little moist water is what activates gorilla glue so with that just go ahead and make sure that you moisten that joint a little bit first okay i want to show you how we're doing this going down the hallway now you can see how i have the plank extended all the way down there but basically is all i did is i put two temporary boards right in here both of these on my next row i i know this is where i want to start so i made sure i didn't have any joints lining up so i'm putting this together and now i'm putting together my roll that's actually going to go in there this piece this is pretty close to where it's going to be but so three and a half inches i'm gonna make this doorway here my cut stop right here and so i'm gonna go cut this off slide that in okay so now i'll go down here and still have my main chalk line snapped here that you can see and i'll see where i need to be i'm at 11 and 5 8. so now i just go down and i straighten this floor out to that 11 and 5 8 the whole way with this marking board here that i use this cheater board because all i did is i took a board and i cut off the female end i leave the male end on which gives me the gap i want by the time i run my marker right there i'm getting the quarter inch that i want and so that's how you make a cheater board [Music] [Music] now the other thing that's nice is my door jambs [Music] i don't have any in yet because this is a new construction house so for me it makes it a little easier a lot easier actually okay so i'm making sure my floor is straight off that main line now i'm going to shove this piece on for temporary just measure since i have a chalk line here or to make sure that that is straight again i can just lock it in with another board and now i'll just come down here so once you know that you're straight now i can mark this okay so i just went outside and cut this now i'm going to put it in place and now again i'm going to go through and measure this see off the main part of my floor where it's definitely secured where we already installed all that living room i'm going off of that measurement so what i'm going to do is i have a door here now if you had carpet here you could just pull your carpet back and you could do it this way but i'm just going to put in temporary pieces to secure this floor i always put them where the seams are for sure and then i put one at the end and now you could put this piece in right here that you that you cut and then screw it down like right along the baseboard i've i've showed that in other videos this is just a different way that i do it here's an example of what i mean and this is a hallway where i installed that last row and you can see how i screwed this in and then i can just pull those screws at the very end and fill those holes in with some wood filler and i actually really like doing it this way the best so then i don't have to try to fill in screw holes later okay so the reason why i do it like this is because those little spacers that you can buy from home depot lowe's wherever online they just don't work you slide them in between the plank and the wall you see some people do blue tape the tape they just don't work i like to have a solid steady floor it gives you an easier installation it's going to help you so it doesn't cause problems with planks coming apart and just an absolute struggle going down hallways and into other rooms so i highly recommend that you use this method i'm going to show you how to install these last few rows that we left out and this applies to anywhere where you left a row out um i'm showing you a little trick here so what i'm doing because i left two rows out at where we started now what i did is i took the cheater board and i i hooked it up to a scrap and now this is gonna let me reach this board so that when i'm marking along the wall here this is actually the board that is going to go along the wall and that's actually two planks away um and so what i do is i just attach that cheater board to the scrap and i just follow the along the wall like we've been shut like i've been showing you on how you use the cheater board when it's just by itself and again the reason why i'm doing this with two boards is because i left two rows of plank out if you left three rows out you could stack up three boards just like this with the cheater board and you'd be just fine now we're coming up to this vent here and this is real easy to mark these boards on the vents so what i do is i line up those two end joints right there it doesn't look like it because one's beveled in because i'm lining up the the tongue with the edge of the other plank but they are even with each other and then i get it square with the plank and right on the edge i line it up right on the edge of the vent once it's square and lined up at the edge of the vent then you can make your mark and that'll be the edge of the vent right there then you just come up to the front of the vent like i'm showing here get that lined up with the vent make your mark there now you're gonna see here and i'm still gonna mark it but i'm mark i'm marking this vent and some of this plank actually does show but it's very little and it's crooked that vent is cut in there crooked so i don't need to cut that the vent cover is going to cover that so i'm not even worried about cutting that part but i wanted to mark it just to show you that you can mark a vent out so now that i'm done marking these boards i'm going to pull these two scrap p or not two scrap pieces but all these scrap pieces out along the wall here that's been holding the floor down i'm gonna get this plank out of place and get it ready to bring outside so i can cut it with the jigsaw now i want to show you one other thing here when you when you before you pull these planks out you want to mark where the butt joints are on these two rows that you're going to pull outside because you don't when you reinstall the next two rows because you have to reinstall these rolls with new plank because you're taking these out and these are actually going along the wall you want to mark on the floor where those butt joints were so that when you install the next couple of rows that you're not going to line your butt joints up so you can see how when i start my first piece here i made sure it wasn't lining up with that marker now when you're installing this plank this is actually going against the locking system we're actually sliding the plank the groove into the tongue now instead of the tongue into the groove and so some it's really easy to damage this tongue so i like to use a scrap piece to bang on instead of banging on that tongue so we don't have any damage to it whatsoever it just will make sure that that planks gonna go together easily for you and i just use the tapping block as you can see to tap it into place now what i do is i slide the butt joint in first i get the plank as close as i can so it will lay down flat so that groove is almost touching the tongue but it's not and now i'm going to slide it over by just ever so lightly picking it up at an angle and then i'm going to hit it with my tapping block while i'm holding it up at an angle and it's going to slide right in there super simple to do now if you have a drop and lock you'd still do the same thing you just wouldn't have to worry about locking it into the butt joint first and so when you get into these tight spots against the wall where you can't use a tapping block to help you this is where a drive bar comes in handy now this is a heavy duty drive bar you're going to have a lot cheaper one that you can find from home depot i'll leave links for all my tools below if you want to check those out but just get your your top your drive bar on that scrap piece that you've been using with the tapping block and go ahead and just beat that floor right into place while you're still lifting the plank up normally at that slight angle usually don't use this is one that came with the flooring but you can see i left my gap and then i'm going to try to nail down into that gap because this is hard plastic hard to nail into if this was on concrete you could just glue it but otherwise i'm just going to nail it so i'm just using a brad nailer and then we'll just go through and fill these little holes and we're all done now along patio doors i like to also use quarter on it just looks a lot nicer and this in this situation you can see we used an end cap and i have another video that will walk you through how to do this step by step and how to use it without the track okay i want to talk to you a little bit about transitions now this one is a three in one so it can be a square nose which is this part so carpet would go up to that it can also be a reducer which goes where you would go from the laminate to nothing can also use this from this can go over the laminate and the other edge can go over tile i'll show you that in another video but and then this could be a t-mold so i'm going to make a square and all so what i want to do now is i want to i need to cut this and this is a tool that comes with it you can see it's got a little blade in there so what i do because this is what i want to make this is the square nose part so i'm going to cut this part off so i just slide this in there get it nice and flat once you get it started it's you can kind of see it's cutting that blade gets in there at first it's kind of weird to start it but then you just pull it just runs right along forms right along the transition while you're pulling it and then that just pops right off now you can see that's the square note okay so i'm going to be installing a t-mold now and this is what the t-mold looks like now what you usually use this for is in between two hard surfaces like tile and wood plank of some sort and that's going to rest on there cut at least a three-quarter inch gap so what i want to make sure of here is that this is going to slide under this trim piece right here and it's not on that side on this side it it barely does and i'm just gonna cut just that part [Applause] [Music] and so what i like to do is i just to like to do like a hershey kiss and let it stick up a little bit you can also use brad nails but two molds are pretty thin and flimsy and you have if you do use a brad nailer you need to make sure you hit it right through the middle another thing i like to do to give me instant grab is i use this glue and so i just kind of put those in between these then and do the same thing make a mountain so now i'll just take my t-mold slide it where it needs to go these bend a little bit so i can bend it to get it underneath and then just kind of straighten it out a little bit hold it down and you can see it's an inch i want to add that little extra so i'm going to actually make it maybe an inch and 3 16. so that means i wanna bring that line pushing three sixteens this way and that's where i wanna end my laminate so i'm just gonna make a mark at an inch and three sixteenths there and then down here so now this is going to be my guide this line right here is going to be my guide to where i want to end my laminate [Music] and see how i went at an angle there so that i wouldn't come past that's just dust not a track not the track that comes with it just some peel 400 construction adhesive i like to use the premium stuff this is something else that we use and i'll send a link for it this is from a specialty store and that stuff actually works the best with vinyl plastic transitions so now i'm just going to put this in and i usually like to shoot it right out here where the thicker part of the wood is brad nails mainly to hold it in place so if you're doing this on concrete you don't need to use brad nails you can just weigh it down with something home depot menards they usually sell one piece at a time so just take it and i'm going to go like a finger tip away a quarter inch away from that nosing i'm just going to hammer it right onto that strip and then i like to use one of these tuck knives this is a linoleum knife you can find this at home depot lowe's and i just like to tuck it in [Music] make it nice and pretty all right so i'm going to be preparing i'm preparing this right now for a stair nose this is a stair nose it's an overlapping stair nose you can see how it has this thinner part it's thicker here and then thinner here this part right here is what overlaps over the plank now with the floating floor you need to have an overlapping steering hose you can buy a flush mount stair nose if you're going to use this on the stair where you would use this on a stair like this when you put your plank down on the stair you're going to glue that so it's not going to move where this is needs to move so you have to use an overlapping steering hose here okay so i want to show you here real quick how you need to prep this you can see that this riser is flush it has no lip on it whatsoever and that's what you need to have before you use any kind of stair nose with a floating floor you need to have that riser flat you can see here like in this example on the stair the nose sticks out from the riser well that needs to be cut off and you can use that or you can use a jigsaw or an oscillating saw to do this it just needs to be flush so now what's going to happen here as you can see if i have my stair nose wrapping around that then this goes to there so now i'm going to cut the plank right to that line and that's going to give me the plank right in this lip here so that it allows to an expansion joint now the steering wheels i'm going to put a nice bead a little bit bigger all the way across spread it out a little bit okay so now i'm just going to take the steriles and i'm gonna put this in and press down nice and tight just a few every six to eight inches i don't want to step on this for at least 12 hours like tomorrow morning or the next day you can step on it but i like to give it at least overnight for it to set nicely okay now everything that i've shared with you inside this video as far as the step different steps of the process go i have videos broken down on each of these steps you can find these on my youtube channel now if i've helped you at all with anything inside this video could you do me a favor and hit that like button i'd really appreciate it if you want to see more of my videos hit the subscribe button you know the drill with the bell there if you want to be notified now i i just my next video that i'm going to be shooting here within the next week is and releasing very soon is um a vinyl plank job inside a living room and entry now we went and got this vinyl plank from costco costco of all places now i've been against going to costco for vinyl plank for many years i've kind of even chuckled about people telling me that they were looking there and you'd be very surprised at what i found and what we are installing inside this living room so check that video out now i i pray that each of you are blessed you and your family i i pray that your your projects go well for you i pray for that in jesus name god bless you all and thanks for watching again i'm joe latender i'll see you soon oh so that's how you do that oh you didn't want to move it no i really don't care good you guys are family you're at home so that's how you do that i love that okay do a couple more times nothing i want you to just do it a couple more times so i got a few takes of it so that's how you do that let's do that again bring your phone up a little like what right there okay hold on go for it so that's how you do that do another one i like that one so that's how you do that come on couple more you don't even have to say anything i gotta lose luck okay wait

Channel: So That's How You Do That!

Views: 128,658

Rating: 4.9548917 out of 5

Keywords: vinyl plank flooring, how to install vinyl flooring, how to install vinyl plank flooring, installing vinyl flooring, installing vinyl plank flooring, how to install laminate, vinyl plank flooring install, vinyl plank flooring installation, vinyl flooring installation, luxury vinyl plank flooring installation, vinyl plank installation, installing vinyl plank flooring on concrete, how to install laminate flooring, installing laminate flooring, laminate flooring, install laminate

Id: 6eZHHSzI7Qo

Length: 54min 48sec (3288 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021