LifeProof LVP Flooring: How to use on stairs and create a matching Bullnose!

okay so today we are working on the stairs this is with the lifeproof luxury vinyl planks my goal is to use the exact same planks that we did with the floor for the stairs and I've worked out a little plan even though they don't sell bull noses for this I think I got a way of working a bull nose from the actual planks you can see I've got the first plank on there all the way up the stairs so I've done that and as it works out each of these blanks is about two thinks planks about seven and a half inches in width so I can get exactly two and the second one will actually wrap around and be the actual bull nose for the stairs now the process I'm going to be using is to take an existing board as you can see right here and heat it and actually bend it into position so as you can see this actually worked out pretty well I'm going to show you with my sample I can slap that in there and obviously this was just a test so I don't have it exactly measured but tap it a little bit more and it'll fit in there and snap in just like a regular plank will and then you'll see the end looks like an actual bull nose now this was my first little test of the theory so what I know I have to do is I have to hollow out the inside just a little bit more where the curve is so that it's easier to bend when I heat it up and that's what I'm doing right now outside okay so the first step in getting our bull nose created is to go ahead and take the piece that you cut that's going to become the bull nose get it in your position and then I kind doesn't have to be exact but as you can see this is where it's going to eventually end up and of course we'll tapped it in tighter later but the idea now is to figure out where the end of this bull nose is down here so I take a felt-tip sharpie and just run it up underneath there the edge all the way across because in my case the stairs aren't exactly even going this way so I have to make sure that I use the measurement of the actual stairs and not try to do a straight line per se pull that out and now what I got have is where the actual bull nose is going to be so what I need to do is cut out about a two inch strip just remove the material or a little much as I can without getting the course all the way through from here to the top and I'm gonna use a router a small hand router for that you might have something better but that's all I've got so anyway that's what we're gonna do next okay so I'm out here with my little makeshift table and what I've done now this was the original line that I marked from the stair and I wanted to go a half inch each on this wrote in about a half one and a half inches that way because the way it bends around I need a good amount to be able to bend it without much resistance so I've marked my lines across here not doesn't have to be exact but just about what I need here and now I'm gonna use my little handy router which by the way is a little black and matrix Black & Decker matrix grape tool comes in handy nice little router with it I only have it set I'm using a 3/4 wide bit in this obviously so I don't have to do a bunch of little cuts and I'm just gonna kind of cut it down along here and it's set to about an eighth of an inch the boards are about I think a quarter of an inch thick so if I take an eighth inch that leaves about an 8 inch material left on there that shall be plenty bit bendable once I heat it up so hopefully in the end my theory of how this should work will turn out all right so what we're gonna do is we're going to go ahead and do the routing all right so basically I have it no guiding board right here that I've set up to give me somewhat of a straight line like I said it doesn't have to be perfect but I'm trying to we need about it [Music] okay so let's brush this off here not bad as you can see we've got a nice clean cut in there about an eighth of an inch has been taken out and then I'm gonna go ahead and adjust it so I can do the next little row it takes me about three cuts with a 3/4 inch and that'll be good okay so now we've adjusted it for the second cut and we're gonna go ahead and finish that up [Music] you all right so I flipped the plank around so that I can get a smoother cut on this since the router tends to rip it more on one side so I wanted a nice clean cut mainly for looks even though no one's going to see this but then we do the final cut okay okay so we now have our final board cut here and as you can see we have just a small bit left on the end there just enough to give it some sturdiness some rigidness whatever you want to call that but I think this will give us enough leeway so that when I heat it up it's not going to be too stiff so that I can't bend it easily okay so we are in the process of adding our stair bull noses there's our first one second the third one we had a bit of a problem which I will explain later we're at four five six now we're on the seventh one just to kind of give you an idea what we've done is you can see there's a lip that I put the plank in make sure it's nice and connected like this and it's sticking straight out over the actual bull nose of the stairway staircase so I put a glue down for now and as you can see okay this is the actual bullnose underneath that I'm wrapping it around okay there you go you can see it cut out underneath that we talked about earlier so now I've set some glue in here and little on the edges here and I'm kind of setting it down to let it dry just a little sort of stiff or at least that's on there nice and tight so that when we start heating it up then it won't kind of move as much from up this direction so hopefully and that will take care of that okay so the next step is to just take my hand your little ruler just to kind of get an idea where the edge of the bullnose is that I'm going to actually be bending and it's been pretty consistent a little under three inches from the edge of my seven inch ruler here I'm going to make a mark up top here at the three inches and this doesn't have to be exact it's just to give you an idea of where you're gonna have to start heating to get it nice and bendy right at the spot where you need it okay all right so a little bit more accurate now this is best done with two people so that one can be heating and as it gets hot we start doing the bending now since there's only two of us it's a little harder to show but I will try to set something up at some point so we can kind of see how I'm doing this basically we're heating it up oops and as it gets hot I'm taking this 2x4 and I take it on the edge and I just kind of just kind of bend it around it and I'm using this because it makes it nice and straight otherwise if you use your handy if this if it gets real bendy and melty this part gets kind of uneven you'll see it's kind of crooked as you're going through here so this helps make it nice and smooth and even and then you'll end up with like you see right down here how it kind of goes around and there you can see my my marks from before right near the edge of where it needed to be heated so you start off heating it right around there and as you make your Bend slowly start working your way down and then heat it up down here so that you can kind of bend it underneath eventually what happens is I've got some temporary risers or whatever you call those that go in the back here so that when this is nice and soft I push these in and clamp it to kind of almost clamps it so that once it cools it'll cool into that shape there and so that's where we're at right now we're doing the seventh step this has been a learning process because I've not seen as done before on the Netta YouTube so I've had to come up with my own literally technique for this and basically we're just using this little hot gun and I would say it takes about maybe 10-15 minutes at most per stare you know once I get it to this point here where I can start heating it up the thing is you got to go slow and you have to be really careful that you're making sure you feel it make sure it's nice and hot and if it feels too hot to your touch it's perfect because that's that's what you need you need that material will be nice and soft and then you can start to bend it otherwise the end of cracking it okay I mentioned earlier that's stair number three was a problem and actually it was not the technique it was me getting too impatient and trying to force it of course it was only the third one so what happened is when I put it in here originally I had it all nicely lined up in here and it worked and then when I pulled it out because I thought for some reason I needed to pull it out to put the glue on this end and then put it back in not sure why I'm like you're thinking I think was my first step I actually had to pull it off and bend it a little bit more but what happened is those of you that are working with lifeproof you know that it has these grooves right here and when I put it on a piece of debris had gotten in on this side right here so when I was pushing it in and I don't know maybe I can get into kind of give you an idea of what happened if any rate it was lining up nice and smooth up on this side and I'm not gonna put a hole in it just get it the idea it wasn't lining up here and throughout my entire flooring process I've been thinking you know always making sure that this is nice and clean and there's no debris in there for this feat for some reason this time I didn't check it there was a little chunk in there so I got just where I was hammering I was banging it in here trying to get a lined up because I thought for sure it was just something that needed to be bumped in there a little bit more and I ended up banging it too hard and there you see what happens because as it got soft you know for the bending process it also got a little brittle there and my impatience cost me a board in a stair and at that time part about 20 minutes of work because I still wasn't quite sure what I was doing so I'm gonna come back and after we cut this we will move the stuff inside there again you know get that little router on there and then now that I got my technique a little bit better down pack and also not trying to force stuff make sure that the grooves are clean and this goes for if you're doing flooring anyway always make sure that you've got these grooves clear debris because that'll really throw you off even just a little piece like something like that going in there will will cause it not to completely line up correctly and then you're gonna be frustrated like I was and just don't make the mess a mistake okay [Applause] as you can see here we're heating it up it's kind of slowly going back and forth along the marks that I had this is where the edge I leave underneath bullnose is the actual subfloor I guess with the follicle slips there in this case and so it's just kind of getting hot as soon as it gets kind of bendy which we can test still feels it is stiff right now but you'll notice that as you start [Applause] softening it it's gonna get a little bendy or each time and you'll get a good feel for it hopefully take your time and not be like being rush one of them ended up cracking right now they've got the technique pretty much down and I'll show you how to do the actual bending itself okay so now we're going to use that 2x4 and I use this to kind of roll it over and kind of see it's nice and bendy right now ideally you want to keep the heat going on it to keep it warm but someone had to do the video so any rate we want to go ahead and just kind of slowly keep bending it and I use the two by fours so that it stays nice and smooth otherwise would be your hands you get these little dents in them which I'm just kind of slowly forming it down it's still nice and warm but again you want to keep it going so I'm going to continue this and we're gonna keep eating and we'll get back to you once we get to the port where it goes underneath signing out we've got this nice and soft we're going to move it underneath this is my temporary razor and I just kind of stick it underneath there while it's still nice and warm and moldable whatever you want to call that is it is to kind of get it to the shape so that when it cools with the glue pretty much keeps it in there already but I'm gonna go ahead obviously later and I'm gonna put some extra screws underneath each of these bull noses and then the risers will go in and hold everything in nice and tight from there I think this one's ready to go nice still a little bit warm so I can feel that it's gonna cool in place and then it'll be shaped to the bull nose and we've got ourselves another stare gun okay so now that the actual stair has been molded at the top nose bone over there I'm softening up the bottom so that when we put the risers in it'll hold up nice and neat underneath and be held in place in the novel also kind of cool at that position so the risers I'm just using you for straight wood painted there's the previous step okay with blue on the back sliding it up underneath it's very tight so don't you pump found it in there either go ahead and get nice and tight and keep everything in line so hopefully this gives you a good idea of we got to do okay now we're in the process of putting this final piece in as you can see it's a very tight fit which is what I want nice fit in there it's holding this up the only only other thing I'm gonna do is wipe a little of the glue off the bottom because as you push it in obviously kind of scrapes across the bottom of this and then we're done okay so now that the floors are done my bull noses are done my risers are in I think overall despite the fact that I'm not a professional they turned out pretty darn good and I can always say I did this and those of you that are professionals or maybe even if you're just doing this once if you got the luxury vinyl planks this might give you an idea of how you can get a bull nose for your staircase maybe the professionals can figure out some kind of a routine way that's a lot easier and more professionally done to get these to work but I'm a DIY er and this is my work and I think it turned out pretty damn good you

Channel: Chronologically Experienced

Views: 398,221

Keywords: lifeproof, lvp, bullnose, stairs, diy, home depot, lvp stair nose, lvp stair nose installation, lvp nose, installing lvp flooring, lvp stairs, lvp flooring, vinyl plank flooring on stairs, lifeproof flooring on stairs, vinyl flooring on stairs, Luxury Vinyl Plank Stair Nose DIY, lvp on stairs, vinyl on stairs, lvp stair installation, lifeproof stair nose installation, installing vinyl plank flooring on stairs

Id: RCASgPttPD8

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020