The Easy Way to Install Vinyl Flooring

Installing vinyl flooring is one of those home improvement projects that is well within the ability of the average homeowner to accomplish. It may seem a little intimidating at first, but once you have done just one room you should have the confidence to be able to tackle almost any vinyl flooring job. Here is the easy way to install vinyl flooring in your home.

First of all, your flooring material needs to be as warm as possible when you install it if you want it to go down correctly. So if the weather has been cold outside, it may be a good idea to leave your vinyl flooring in a warm room for a couple of days to let it actually heat up and become more pliable before you actually start to lay it down.

But once you are ready to get started, just simply roll the vinyl out into the room and see how it lays. Usually it's best to align the vinyl pattern with the most dominant wall, or the most visible wall in the room first and then work out from there. So do that and see how the vinyl fits with the rest of the room. If it all looks like it's going well, you can actually start to trim off the excess around the room. Just be sure that all areas of the room are well covered before you start trimming.

Generally speaking, a 2 -3 inch overlap is sufficient when you're trimming in the room. Once you have all of your general trim cuts made, and the excess vinyl has been removed, you can now start to roughly cut in the corners of the room to make sure that the vinyl will lay nice and flat up against all of the walls.

Now here is where a lot of folks have trouble with vinyl flooring. If there are fixtures in the room, like a sink or toilet for instance, they don't know how to cut around these obstacles. Actually though, there is a very simple and easy way to solve that vinyl flooring problem. What you need to do is to make a paper template of the floor before you lay the vinyl down in the area where the obstacles are.

This paper template needs to be made of very solid and tough paper that will not rip and tear easily. If you use the toilet as an example, you lay enough paper to cover one half of the toilet's footprint on the floor and cut the paper in so that it fits up nice and tight to the edge of the toilet. Then you use another piece of paper to do the same on the other half of the toilets footprint.

Then you can remove the paper, tape both sides together and it will give you a perfect pattern for the bottom of the toilet so that you can make a good, clean cut on the vinyl that will fit exactly right when you lay the vinyl down. Just repeat this process for each fixture in the room that cannot be removed, like a sink or tub.

Once you have the vinyl cut out in advance for all of the obstacles in the room and generally cut in for each corner of the room, you can now put down your vinyl adhesive and began to install the flooring itself. Be sure to use a utility knife that is both safe and sharp, as a dull knife will create more problems than it is worth. Make your final cuts up against the walls and finalize any trimming that needs to be done around the room fixtures, and you should be done.

Then just be sure to give the floor enough time to dry out thoroughly before opening it up for regular traffic. If you use these suggestions for installing a vinyl floor, it should be a simple and easy task to complete.

Thad Pickering writes on many consumer related topics including home improvement. You can find discount vinyl flooring and vinyl garage flooring by visiting our Home Improvement website.

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