DIY Installation
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DIY VINYL INSTALLATION
Preparing Your Floors For Vinyl
Before starting, you will need to measure the room. With measuring tape, establish the size of the room to get accurate measurements. Be sure to keep a small amount of extra vinyl above what you measured. Remove any free-standing furniture and appliances that would interfere with installation. If it’s in the kitchen, you will need to remove the refrigerator and oven. If it’s in the bathroom, take out the toilet. After the items have been removed, remove the baseboards and/or trim along the bottom edges of the wall.
Next, if you have a carpet floor, remove the old flooring. Vinyl flooring will cover most surfaces as long as they are rigid, flat, and dry. Pull up the old floor and work along the subfloor to remove staples and nails not driven into the floor surface. For safety reasons, contact your county for asbestos testing before disturbing adhesives.
For precise measurements, make a paper template of the floor. Cut heavy construction paper to lay across the floor. Cut any corners and customize pieces to cover the entire floor. After this step, you are ready for the underlayment. The underlayment (or underlayer) is usually a ¼-inch thick layer of plywood that smooths out the floor and provides a base for the vinyl. Tape the paper template to the underlayer plywood and use it as a guide to cut the plywood so it fits the flooring.
Once you have all the pieces, place the underlayer plywood sheets in the room and leave them on for 2 to 3 days. This will help the plywood acclimate to the home’s humidity levels and prevent the vinyl from tearing later. After a few days, you will need a special underlayer stapler with 7/8 staples to install the underlayer. You should never use nails or screws, as they will cause bumps in the vinyl. As you work across the room with the staples, remove any that do not go all the way through.
To finish the underlayer, work across the floor with a sander and smooth down any edges that are not flush where they meet. Using a leveling compound, fill the spaces and cracks in the underlayer. Follow the package directions for the leveling compound so it is compatible with the underlayment and vinyl adhesive.
Laying Your Vinyl Floors
With these preparations complete, your floor is ready for vinyl! You should have a pattern already picked out for the vinyl. You will need to know if your vinyl is self-stick or a glue-down type. The self-stick vinyl is easier to install since the adhesive backing is already on the tiles or planks. The glue-down type will require more work.
Mark down your pattern on the paper template. Lay down the vinyl on the template and use a pattern to cut the vinyl to size. Start gluing the vinyl flooring with the adhesive and a notched trowel. Scoop some of the glue onto the trowel and spread it across the underlayer in one section of the room. Wait a few minutes before laying the vinyl down on the adhesive so it sets, and the air bubbles dissipate.
For solid vinyl tiles, place each one flat and aligned with the rows. Be careful not to slide any tiles or planks, which will drag the adhesive. Press down on the vinyl so it sticks to the adhesive. With small tiles, you can use a rolling pin to help push down on the vinyl. Apply the vinyl across the floor according to the pattern and fill the floor until you reach the edges.
Applying the Finishing Touches
Wait several hours for the adhesive to dry, then replace the molding/trim and add threshold strips. If vinyl is in the bathroom, use a caulk gun for the edges of the floor where they meet the baseboards to protect from future water damage.
If you still have questions, call/email the H&R Carpets & Flooring team.
DIY CARPET INSTALLATION
Preparing Your Floors For Carpet
Before starting, you will need to measure the room. With measuring tape, establish the size of the room to get accurate measurements. Be sure to keep a small amount of extra vinyl above what you measured. Remove any free-standing furniture and appliances that would interfere with installation. If it’s in the kitchen, you will need to remove the refrigerator and oven. If it’s in the bathroom, take out the toilet. After the items have been removed, remove the baseboards and/or trim along the bottom edges of the wall.
Next, if you have a carpet floor, remove the old flooring. Vinyl flooring will cover most surfaces as long as they are rigid, flat, and dry. Pull up the old floor and work along the subfloor to remove staples and nails not driven into the floor surface. For safety reasons, contact your county for asbestos testing before disturbing adhesives.
For precise measurements, make a paper template of the floor. Cut heavy construction paper to lay across the floor. Cut any corners and customize pieces to cover the entire floor. After this step, you are ready for the underlayment. The underlayment (or underlayer) is usually a ¼-inch thick layer of plywood that smooths out the floor and provides a base for the vinyl. Tape the paper template to the underlayer plywood and use it as a guide to cut the plywood so it fits the flooring.
Once you have all the pieces, place the underlayer plywood sheets in the room and leave them on for 2 to 3 days. This will help the plywood acclimate to the home’s humidity levels and prevent the vinyl from tearing later. After a few days, you will need a special underlayer stapler with 7/8 staples to install the underlayer. You should never use nails or screws, as they will cause bumps in the vinyl. As you work across the room with the staples, remove any that do not go all the way through.
To finish the underlayer, work across the floor with a sander and smooth down any edges that are not flush where they meet. Using a leveling compound, fill the spaces and cracks in the underlayer. Follow the package directions for the leveling compound so it is compatible with the underlayment and vinyl adhesive.
Installing Carpet Pad
Pad provides insulation, reduces noise, and adds comfort underfoot. Padding helps carpet last longer, always install new carpet padding before your carpet.
Because carpet and carpet padding come in fixed widths, you may have to lay more than one piece of padding or carpet in a room requiring a seam. Lay the carpet pad on the subfloor so that its seams are at right angles at right angles to potential seams in your new carpet. In other words, the carpet is laid over the pad with its seams perpendicular to the seams of the padding.
Use a carpet trimmer or sharp utility knife to cut the pad fitting the length of the room. The pad edges meet the edge of the tack strips and shouldn’t be placed over the tack strips. Tape pad pieces together with 2- to 3-inch masking tape or as required by the manufacturer. Cover the entire floor with padding. A staple hammer-tacker will help you fasten the pad to the edge of the tack strip. Trim excess pad. Staple the pad at the seams, alternating the staples so they aren’t next to each other. When installing carpet padding on concrete, follow the manufacturer’s recommendation for carpet adhesive.
Measure & Cut the Carpet
Measure the room’s longest wall. Add 6 inches to your measurement. Unroll a sufficient amount of carpet, notching the back of the carpet with a utility knife at the right length. Roll up the carpet with the backing facing outward and snap a chalk line at the notch you made. With the chalk line facing up, place a board underneath the carpet to provide a stable cutting surface. Use a straightedge to guide the carpet cutter along the chalk line using a sharp blade.
Lay the Carpet
To place your carpet, put the cut piece of carpet down and unroll it. Place it with the backing face-down along the wall onto the padding. The carpet seams should be at right angles to the padding seams.
As you unroll, keep about 3 inches of extra carpet next to the wall making relief cuts at corners so the carpet lays flat. Cut from the top using a carpet knife. Unroll additional pieces of carpeting into position working your way across the floor. Be sure the carpet’s pile goes in the same direction on the pieces. Adjoining edges must be straight, touching, but not overlapping.
Use the heat-activated seaming tape where two pieces of carpeting meet. Lift and bend back one side of the seam, slip the seam tape halfway underneath the carpet resting on the floor. Lower the raised piece of carpet and check that the seam is tight for the entire length. Following the tape manufacturer’s guidelines, place a heated seaming iron into the seam and slowly glide it along the seam to activate the tape adhesive. Place flat, heavy objects on top of the seam as the glue dries.
Place a knee kicker about 3 inches from a long wall near a corner, push it with the tool and hook the carpet into position on the tack strip. Move along the wall as you strike the kicker to stretch and pull any wrinkles or slack from the carpet as you latch it to the strips. After the carpet is attached along the first wall, trim the excess from the edge using a wall carpet trimmer. To operate the trimmer, set it to the thickness of the carpet. Keep the tool’s shoe pressed tightly against the carpeting. Keep the carpet tight against the baseboard as you guide it along the wall, pressing the cut edge under the baseboard using a carpet tucker or stair tool.
With the carpet anchored along the first wall, move to the opposite wall and use a carpet stretcher with lever action to stretch the carpet across the floor. Place the head of the stretcher several inches from the wall to be attached. Its teeth will grip into the carpet. Adjust the extension rods behind the stretcher, extending across the floor and back to the first wall. Protecting the baseboard with a scrap board wrapped in scrap carpet, push the lever down to stretch the carpet taut. Reaching in front of the power stretcher, hook the carpet onto the tack strip.
Stretch the carpet in sections, as you continue along the wall. Trim excess carpet with the wall trimmer and tuck the edge underneath the baseboard. Once the carpet has been anchored to the two opposite walls, repeat the procedure to stretch, anchor, cut and tuck the remaining walls.
Once the installation is complete, place carpet edging at thresholds where carpet meets another type of flooring, carpet edging is used to connect two slightly uneven floors. Seal the edge of the carpet with latex seam sealer to prevent unraveling. Install a binder bar or a transition strip over the edge with a brad nailer. Replace any doors, baseboards and trim you may have removed earlier in the project.
If you still have questions, call/email the H&R Carpets & Flooring team.
DIY HARDWOOD INSTALLATION
Preparing Your Floors for Hardwood
Some preparation is required to ensure a successful hardwood flooring installation. You should consult with a specialist from H&R Carpets & Flooring for complete instructions, but here are some steps you should expect to take to help the process go smoothly.
You may have to remove your existing flooring to make a suitable installation surface for your new hardwood. This process will differ for different types of existing flooring; extra care may be required if your previous flooring is glued down or set in tile adhesive. It's important to provide a smooth, level surface. A professional flooring specialist can significantly help with this process with the necessary tools and knowledge to judge when the flooring surface is ready. A pro may also be able to assist with the disposal of your old flooring.
All the furniture will have to be removed from the rooms where your new hardwood will be installed. You should consider hiring a professional moving and storage company, especially for large or heavy items. A professional moving team can quickly empty a room or whole house. This will minimize the time you have to live without your furniture to as little as a single day at each end of the job. You should also take down photos or other wall hangings that can be damaged accidentally during the installation of your hardwood flooring.
Measure Square Footage
Square footage is calculated length of the room x the width. If your room is not square or rectangular divide spaces into areas that are rectangular and add them together. When you order your wood flooring from us, we recommend you add 10 percent to the actual square footage of the space for waste.
Prepare Carefully, Then Install
Wood flooring should always be delivered 4 days or more to the home jobsite. Wood has to acclimate to the home in which it will be installed, or it can shrink, gap, or buckle after installation. The most accurate way to ensure that your wood is ready to be installed is a moisture meter. When the wood’s moisture content is less than 12% it’s considered ready to install. Remember: the difference between the wood and the subfloor's moisture content should be 2% or less.
Prepare your room removing baseboards from the entire room. Using a utility knife, score the caulk where baseboard meets the wall and gently use a pry bar to loosen the nails. Work carefully to save and reuse the baseboards after the floor goes in. Remove old flooring, including laminate, carpet pad, tack strips, staples, glue, or other obstruction. This process is labor intensive. The bottoms of most door casings will need to be shortened so the wood fits flush underneath. Put a scrap piece of flooring next to the casing as a template for your hand saw or jamb saw. It's better to cut too small and have to cut again than to cut too far up and have a gap between the molding and the flooring.
The subfloor must be properly prepared. Wood installed over an uneven subfloor will squeak and warp over time. It will be hard to make straight lines during installation, too. Hardwood flooring must be installed over a dry, flat, damage-free wood subfloor at or above grade. Do not install it in a basement or over a cement slab. Use engineered hardwood flooring over cement flooring.
Replace damaged subfloor. Use a 4- or 8-foot level to confirm the subfloor is flat. Lay the level on the floor and sweep it in large circles. Mark any spaces that are high or low. High spots can be sanded down. Low spots can be filled in with layers of roofing felt or wood shims. To meet installation requirements, the subfloor must be within 3/16-inch in any 10-foot area or 1/8-inch in any 6-foot area.
Underlayment is installed between the subfloor and the hardwood flooring. Roll it out, cut it to size, then staple in place with a staple gun.
Flooring is always installed perpendicular to the floor joists. This supports the weight and prevents sagging over time.
Cut board ends to length with a miter saw. Cut boards to width using a table saw.
Leave an expansion gap of 3/4 inch around the perimeter and next to all vertical obstructions like cabinets or walls. Seasonal expansion and contraction occurs with the seasons, the gap will prevent buckling. Baseboards will cover the gap so they’re not visible. visible.
Lay out your wood flooring prior to installation and plan board placement. “Racking creates a random pattern of board end seams and color variation to give the floor a pleasing appearance. Avoid “stair step” and “H” seams. Board ends should be inches or more from the ends of adjacent boards. Work from several open boxes at a time to blend any variation between boxes.
Perfectly straight flooring is more noticeable in certain areas in hallways and doorways. Your room is not a perfect square. Mark a straight chalk line as a guide.
Begin against the longest outer wall that is perpendicular to the floor joists. Use spacers for the 3/4-inch expansion gap. And leave room on the ends of the boards too. Make a chalk line to use as a guide. Choose the straightest long boards you have. Face nail the first row into place using a pneumatic nail gun.
Each new row must fit tightly against the previous row. Use a soft rubber mallet to gently tap the boards together. If you find this is damaging your flooring, you can use a scrap piece of flooring, slide it against the row that needs to be pounded into place, and pound on the scrap. This prevents any damage to the flooring that will be installed.
Using a rubber mallet, tap the tongue side of the second row until its groove is tightly seated with the first row. Using the pneumatic nail gun, blind nail diagonally through this tongue into the subfloor. Continue blind nailing with a nail gun until there is enough clearance for the flooring nailer to fit. Then use the flooring nailer for the remainder of the project.
Drive nails 1-3 inches from each end, and every 6-8 inches along the length of the board with at least two nails per board.
Cut waste pieces can be reused at the beginning of a row. Make sure the flat, cut end is against the wall.
Boards may need to be cut to fit around walls and cabinets. Lay the board in place and mark the notch. Remember the expansion gap: 1/2 inch at the end of the board and 3/4 inch along the edges. Cut notch and install.
At some point, the flooring nailer will no longer fit between the working board and the far wall. Switch to blind nailing with the nail gun until it no longer fits, then face nail the remaining boards. The last board will probably need to be cut down to size using a table saw. Fit the last two boards together, then drop them into place at the same time. Use a pry bar to push the last rows tightly together before top nailing into place.
Reattach baseboards, fill nail holes in baseboards, caulk, and touch up paint. Install any needed transition pieces, such as reducers, threshold pieces, or T-moldings. Fill all visible nail holes in the flooring with matching wood filler.
If you still have questions, call/email the H&R Carpets & Flooring team.
DIY LAMINATE INSTALLATION
Preparing Your Floors for Laminate
To acclimate the laminate boards with the room, place unopened packages in the room for about 48 hours as they adjust to the temperature and humidity. This helps minimize any shrinkage or expansion that occurs when the boards react to the atmosphere. During this time, check the moisture levels to confirm that the floor is dry. The sub-floor moisture content should not be higher than 1% of the Protimeter prong test scale. The humidity level should stay between 45% to 65% relative humidity.
A final checkup will verify that the sub-floor is level. After finishing these steps, it is time to clean the floor from any small objects on the surface. Once cleaned, lay down a moisture barrier for the floor. The barrier can be a plastic lining which will be covered by the laminate. Avoid overlapping, which causes the floor to rise.
The last step in preparation is to lay down the padding. Most padding and plastic come connected together. If yours does not, cover the plastic lining with foam flooring padding. The padding will prevent residue from rocks or sand while preventing creaking sounds when people walk on the floor. Do not let the foam overlap with one another.
Laying Down the Laminate Boards
With preparation complete, you can now place the first board onto the floor. When placed at the top left corner, ensure it is finished side up with the ridge side facing the wall. Place the spacers between the end and edge of the board and the wall. You can buy spacers or build them on your own. Repeat these steps for the second board, placing it end to end with the next spot along the wall. Make sure that the row is even with the walls.
Once you finish the first row, move on to the second row. Shorten the first piece of the laminate flooring board. It will be staggered when compared to the first row. Securing the block with your less dominant hand, hit the block with a hammer with your dominant hand to close the gap between the first and second boards. Continue these steps until each row is done the same way. Check every third or fourth row to ensure they stay parallel to the wall.
Finishing Your Laminate Installation
For any planks that do not fit, trim them with a sharp miter saw to shorten the planks and a table saw to make them narrower. Remember to put spacers along the edges of the room and remove them once the floor is done. To finish, place baseboards and thresholds or stain.
And that's all it takes! If you still have questions, call/email the H&R Carpets & Flooring team.
DIY TILE INSTALLATION
Assembling Tools & Supplies, Preparing Your Floors for Tile
With measuring tape, establish the size of the room to get accurate measurements by multiplying the width and length together. These measurements let you know the number of tiles you need to buy. You should also determine the tile sizes and patterns if you have not done so already. Be sure to have 15% more tile than the square footage measured since many tiles become cutoffs.
You’ll need the following tools: hammer, pry bar, safety goggles, gloves (for removing existing flooring), a tape measure, level, carpenter’s square, and a chalk line, the right size trowel, putty knife, rubber mallet, short wooden block, a wet saw or manual tile cutter, and tile nippers.
You’ll need these supplies: seam tape, tile spacers, thin-set or recommended mortar, grout, a rubber grout float, sponge, and water bucket, tile sealant, silicone or caulk (if necessary).
For the planning phase, you must learn about the subfloor material. These instructions are for tiling over wood subfloor, not cement. Remove the baseboard trim. This will help if it’s necessary to replace particleboard subflooring, replacing it with plywood. If you need to remove particleboard, you’ll need a Skil saw.
After replacing the particleboard, inspect the plywood making sure it is attached to the floor joists. The floor is ready for the leveling compound. You will need backerboard made of fiberglass or cement, in 3x5 feet pieces. This is so the tile does not pop off.
At this point, you should make sure that the entire surface is smooth. Use a floor-leveling compound to float out divots, holes, or differences in subflooring height.
Set Up and Install
With planning complete, you should now identify the center of the room. You can do this by measuring each wall to see the respective distances. Be sure to rehearse laying out the tiles starting at the center point. Place tiles in a straight line towards the wall, leaving a small space between tiles. Based on the room layout, repeat this process as many times as necessary.
In some cases, you may need to drill holes in the tiles for items such as radiator pipes or bath pipes. Once you’ve rehearsed all the tile placements and finalized measurements, you are ready to lay the adhesive.
You will have to pick up the rehearsed tiles and set them aside so you can begin spreading the adhesive. Using a notched trowel, start from the center point and apply to small sections at a time, following the rehearsed pattern. Spread the adhesive evenly in a raking motion.
Set the first tile in place with the corner lines made by the center point without any additional pressure or twisting motion. Set the tile spacer and continue this process with the remaining tiles. After the tiles have been set, wait at least one day or overnight so the adhesive has plenty of time to dry. Once the adhesive is cured, you can grout the joints!
Grouting and Curing
Using a rubber float, press grout into the joints to an even level in a diagonal direction. Skim the excess from the tile with the rubber float. Wait a few minutes for the grout to stiffen up in the joints. To work across the joints, use a damp sponge to remove haze from the tiles. Continue this process for all joints in the remaining quadrants of tiles.
Using caulk for joints at the wall and floor interfaces is best since tiles can expand or contract depending on temperature. The caulk will help buffer the expansion and contractions that happen over time. After grouting, let the whole flooring area cure for about a week before mopping it to remove the remaining haze.
If you still have questions, call/email the H&R Carpets & Flooring team.