Well to finish the whole house, we needed one more thing, new flooring. The fun with this one is the flooring runs around the kitchen, through the front hall, entryway, powder room and closets. Yahoo! Well as you can see we did it, now we'll show you how.
The old flooring had welcome mats melted onto it by the sun and was showing wear.
We used Allure resilient vinyl tile from TrafficMASTER. The pattern we chose was "
Ashlar" to keep with the warm tones in the house. It comes in 1 foot by 3 foot planks.
This flooring goes right over your old stuff if you have a solid floor. We decided to trim the baseboards and slip our pieces under rather than removing all the trim.
The Fein can get any interior corners the saw can't reach.
We recommend you start in a solid corner. We didn't have that luxury. Our first piece had a vent and a doorway. We also decided to alternate the tiles so the seams were offset.
Once the initial cuts are made the flooring goes in rather quickly. Be sure to tuck your corners and edges in nice and tight.
You can use a utility knife to cut. Make sure you have a good hard surface and a nice straight edge to work with.
All the fun spots are back behind stoves refrigerators and into closets
The main floor went on quite nicely
Working around stoves and refrigerators can be quite
challenging when there's no place to put them. We moved ours into the
corner in front of the closet. We then installed the flooring up behind
it and rolled the refrigerator back onto the new floor.
Next came the final thin row along the edge of the wall to the basement door way, into the front hall and closet
Fun times cutting thin little pieces. be careful not to bend or flex thin pieces, it can break off.
But then you get to install nice full pieces and keep the floor rolling
Once we got past the closet we had the powder room to
contend with. The toilet was removed in the flooring placed through the
bathroom.
The worst piece was in the entryway at the bottom of the stairwell, as you can see.
But something that trivial didn't stop us!
Then it was fitting the final pieces in along the entry and the front door.
There you have it! A beautiful entryway with the tack strips
replaced and the heater vent back in place.
The hall with the powder
room and the closet all finished.
And the kitchen in all its glory.
We
use a wood threshold to match the flooring in the family room to
separate it from the kitchen.
Here's a few parting shots.
