DIY How to Install Vinyl Plank Laminate Flooring for Beginners [Vinyl Plank Flooring Tutorial]

DIYTechnician

Feb 10, 20215 min read

Purchased with Vinyl Plank Flooring from Lowe's. Not promoting Lowe's but them and Home Depot are the closest around for getting materials such as this. You can order it online as well which is what I recommend so as to avoid retail mark up. Here are a couple of paid links to ordering this from amazon. I get a tiny small cut of the profit if you order.

LifeProof I966101L Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring 8.7" x 47.6" - Woodacres Oak: https://amzn.to/370oIcK

LifeProof I106515L Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring 8.7" x 47.6" - Restored Wood: https://amzn.to/37RqpKy

The top of this flooring is nice, hard and smooth while the bottom has a padded rubber buffer that makes it really comfortable and installer friendly.

The first step for me was to gut everything in the bathroom. While you don't necessarily need to do this, it does make it a lot easier. This flooring installation was a planned part of the remodel. You will need to make sure you bathroom floor is flat before installing your vinyl plank flooring. Luckily, mine was flat....well relatively flat depending on exactly how technical you want to get. Let's just say it was flat enough to install vinyl plank flooring. I chose to go with vinyl laminate flooring because it looks good, no maintenance and wood floors need to be sanded and finished. Guide to sanding and finishing wood floors: https://f95f4-vt7p5m6ma1niyqdu3obe.hop.clickbank.net/

Once everything was ripped out and we had a good surface to start with, it's time to slap the first piece down. We decided to start in the corner and work our way back.

This picture shows one method of scoring and snapping the planks. You can do this with a skill knife.

We found it easiest to run the skill knife (at first) along a straight edge to keep the cut exactly 90 degrees. Once the cut was deep enough and thoroughly scored, the plank snaps to your desired length.

Although scoring and snapping worked well, I found it quickest to make my cuts using my chopsaw. I took great care when using this method to make the cuts because too much of an aggressive approach results in a chattered looking edge. I made the cuts nice and slow and they turned out clean and precise.

Measure, cut and snap it in. Super easy. You will need a flooring installation kit to take up the small gaps that occur during installation.

Don't settle for any gaps. Remember you (or someone else) will have to look at this for the next 20 years so make it tight. This flooring installation kit comes with some shims and a couple of steel jigs to slid in the side of the plank to knock it tightly together. Recommend a hammer and a mallet for installation too. As shown above slip the jig on the short side of the plank and knock it tightly together. A seam should barely be detectable. This is a must.

Once we knocked the plank in from the side we hit the length of the seam with the mallet to lock it in really well. This technique worked really good.

This is the other jig that is part of the flooring installation kit. It's used for knocking and locking the plank in from the long side. Be sure to kit both sides of each plank to firmly lock it into place leaving no detectable gap.

It starts to go quick once you get rolling. If you are able to use the two person method of installing it goes a lot quicker. One person installs and measures while the other one cuts the pieces.

You can see that if you don't knock these together as explained above it WILL result in a poor installation leaving visually detectable gaps.

We made sure to take the time to really knock in and lock in each piece on every accessible side during the installation.

Once you get rolling on this you may even have to go back the knock in the pieces from the sides again just to make 100% sure you are locked in well.

If you don't have a mallet you can lightly use a hammer to hit the seam. Be careful when doing this though so as not to mar the surface. You could use a wood block to place over the seam too if you must hit it with a hammer. A mallet is preferred.

More locking it in with the floor installation kit jigs.

Here is where some the custom cuts must be made. We did this by somewhat loosely laying the plank where it will be placed then marking a cut line on the top of the plank with a marker.

This cut doesn't need to be exactly perfect. Just need to make sure that it's as close to the toilet drain opening as possible as you don't want any openings showing once the toilet is installed. Most toilets have a large enough base where precision is not a factor.

I found it useful to use a jigsaw to make these circular type cuts. I'm wondering if a bandsaw would work for this too.

We made the corder cut first and then the circular cut for the toilet drain just to make sure that the right edge hugged the right side nice and snug.

Putting this piece is was a little bit of a challenge due to it's shape and and configuration but it went in just fine using the same methods as before.

Getting close to the end. The nasty fiberglass from the shower wall can be seen to the right. I eventually will tile all of this.

Down to the last piece.

This is the transition piece. The metal rail that it snaps into gets screwed to the floor and the transition piece snaps into it.

I learned the hard way that the transition piece should not be cut with a chopsaw. My first attempt to cut this with a chopsaw completely ruined the piece I tried to cut. It shattered badly on the end. I used a hack saw to cut both the metal rail as well as the transition piece itself and it came out great.

We snapped it in by pushing down on it then also hitting it with a rubber mallet.

Here's the final product. Took only a few hours to put this in once everything had been ripped out. Now it's time for trim and re-installation of the toilet (don't forget a new wax ring) as well as installing the new vanity.