REPLACING VINYL FLOORING

Al Carrell: One of Kelli's chief complaints about her brand new home was her kitchen vinyl flooring. The seam down the center had split and a crack in the underlying slab foundation left a big lump in another spot. What a mess! If you have a vinyl floor which needs replacing, it's a job you can do yourself. We're going to use Kelly's house to show you how. I have to tell you replacing the flooring in this kitchen made a world of difference. Before we get started on our project today, we had to remove the old flooring. Now actually, the homeowner was able to get a personal friend of hers, one person, to come over here and take up this floor. It took about an hour and a half. You may have more of a problem or maybe not, but before you do anything, if you have floors that are before 1985, you ought to check to be sure you don't have asbestos involved. Take a scrap into your dealer. Let him tell you what to do about it. This job will take you a day or so if you do it alone. Less, of course, if you have a helper. The vinyl for this 10x30 foot kitchen cost about $560. You'll pay nearly double that price if you have it professionally installed. Here's what you're going to need to do it yourself. Some basic tools like an Exacto knife, and a pry bar, a hand scraper, two trowels, a hook blade knife, leveling compound, sheet flooring adhesive, seam sealer and you might want to buy a pattern kit and it's important to use product brands that your vinyl maker recommends so you don't void your warranty. First off, pry the quarter-round from the baseboards. Use a hand scraper to dislodge any leftover glue or other residue on the floor. Jeff, you're doing a grand job. Why you getting all this stuff out of the way here?

Jeff Endicott: Oh, it's real important to have every little piece of dust and dirt and old adhesive up.

AC: That ensures your floor will have no underlying lumps and bumps. Something else you'll do to get a smooth surface is apply leveling compound or what vinyl layers call "float". It's especially useful in places like that foundation crack we showed you.

JE: This is float that we mix up. It comes in a powder in a bag you can get several places and you mix it up with water and you smooth it out till you get the rough areas out of the concrete.

AC: Now, if the homeowner gets ready to do this, they can take a 2x4 that's good and straight and put it down on the floor at a lot of different angles and they can pretty well tell where the low places are, right?

JE: Right.

AC: I have found that if you have a flashlight sometimes that helps too. Put the flashlight on the other side and you'll be able to see where the light comes through under there.

JE: Right.

AC: While the leveling compound dries, measure the floor. Now, Jeff has been laying vinyl for years and he can easily measure a room and then cut the vinyl to fit. But it's a pretty tricky job and honestly, it can be easy to botch up. So you may want to invest in a pattern kit. The kits cost about eighteen bucks and are available in most of the big stores that cater to do-it-yourselfers. They help you to measure your room and cut the vinyl. And think about this before you start your project - you'll need a big, clean space to unroll, measure and cut your vinyl. If you're not using a kit, overcut your flooring to a size that's manageable enough to get inside. Then, cut the edge of your vinyl close enough to the baseboard that the quarter-round is going to cover the edge. Allow about three extra inches to fit under your stove. Roll back the vinyl that you just cut and start spreading the adhesive on the exposed portion of your floor. Then, unroll the vinyl to cover the prepared floor.

JE: Main thing is so you get it rolled into the glue as quickly as possible. Either use your hands or broom or some guys make a 2x4, wrap carpet around it to push it into the glue to push the air bubbles out. The glue creates a gas and bubbles will come back. But they will go back down.

AC: Here's another way to eliminate bubbles without spending six months of weight training to get ready. Rent 100-pound roller for a day and just push it over the vinyl. Now, despite your best efforts, you may end up with a seam where two pieces of vinyl join. We did in this corner here, but that seam can be invisible if you carefully match the pattern on the pieces you're going to join. Seam sealer permanently fuses them together. And while you let that sealer dry a couple of hours, reattach the quarter-round. You may need to caulk the trim before you touch it up with paint. Well Kelli, I told everybody you were going to be floored when you saw this new floor.

Kelli Sandlin: It looks great. I am.

AC: It really is a neat looking floor. And you know, I watched the steps as they put this down. I know it's been done right. You're not going to have the problems you had before.

KS: Well, already it's such an improvement just initially looking at it than the floor before. There aren't any seams. It just feels real solid.

AC: A weekend's work installing vinyl can cut down on future work in the kitchen. The beauty of many vinyls out there today, like Congoleum's Highlight, they keep a shine and just require plain old H20 for cleaning. And boy, this kitchen floor really gives Kelli's kitchen a whole new flavor.

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Episode 63 1997 - 98 Season

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