The day finally arrived. I was ready to take on this project. Well precisely, I already started on the project. I removed the baseboards and carpeting and painted the hallway. I started gathering all the tools I needed and set up a staging area in one of the bedrooms. I was ready to go.
I needed to undercut all 7 doorway jambs. Plus, I was going to undercut the drywall to give me the 1/4-inch expansion gap that was recommended for these floors. I wanted to use the existing baseboards to hide the expansion gap, but the baseboards are only 9/32-inches wide. For a just-okay DIYer, 1/32 of an inch is a little too tight for me. So, I was going with an 1/8-inch gap with a little insurance of ½-inch from the removed drywall. Plenty of an expansion gap.
I purchased a half-circle blade for my oscillating tool to undercut the jambs. I surmised that the shape would be great for this purpose. Well, that was wrong. The blade was not offset so the oscillating tool would not lay flat on the scrap piece of LVP flooring I was using as a guide to cut the jambs. Additionally, the blade was not large enough to cut completely through the jambs. So, I went back to my dull offset blade and set off the smoke alarm. I was burning through the jambs. There was smoke everywhere. I was also burning through the batteries, and they could not be charged fast enough. Nonetheless I went as far as I could go to allow the charger to catch up.
I also needed to cut off the oak nosing by the stairs to replace it was the proper nosing for LVP flooring. Gotta have ¼-inch expansion gap, and the old nosing was not going to work. The half-circle blade was useless. It was too small to cut through the nosing, so the circular saw was needed to assist with removing it. I butchered the nosing. I could have done a better job with an axe. Yes, it would be hidden, so no big deal.
The next morning, I returned the extra half-circle blade to the store to replace it with an offset one. The customer service guy asked why I was returning it. I responded that it did not do the job I expected. He immediately asked if I used it. Keep in mind, the blade was sealed in its original package. I gave him a look of confusion because of the question. After contemplating some snarky answer, I told him I had bought two of them and used one already. I bought my replacement blade, took another sample piece of LVP flooring and went home.
So, you are asking…why did I take a sample piece of LVP flooring when I already had the flooring at home? These extra pieces of flooring are great for securing the floor planks as you pound away to connect them. You attach them to the planks and just screw them down and toss them when you are done. Why ruin your good planks?
I finished undercutting the remaining 5 door jambs. The blade worked great, and I only went through two batteries. I tried to use the half-circle blade to undercut the drywall. But again, the same problem as before. Too short and the blade was not flush with the scrap piece of flooring. I used my old, dull blade and it did its job. I was ready to start laying floor, but first I needed to install the nosing.
I was not going to actually install the nosing. But I needed to mount the metal bracket that the nosing attaches to. I really thought through this part. I cut off three pieces of nosing. They were about 2 inches wide. (I have plenty of extra nosing.) After I cut the metal bracket to size, I put a piece of nosing on both ends and in the middle of it. I laid it down and made sure the nosing cleared the edge of the step and it was perpendicular to the hallway walls.
Guess what? The stair was not perpendicular to the hallway. It was about a 1/16-inch out of square, but doable. Plus, I did not do a great job with cutting off the old nosing, so I needed to do some extra clean up. Finally, I got the mount exactly where I wanted it and screwed it down, Now I was ready to install some flooring.
I again thought this out. I was going to run three widths of planking from the stairs to the back wall of our bedroom. It was a clear shot through the hallway and bedroom. I decided to start there after discovering I would have uneven width planks along the hallway walls. Visually I thought it would look bad, so I split the difference and the planks along the walls would be about 5 inches wide. That would require more cutting around the jambs, but the hallway is the first thing you see, and it had to look right.
I started installing the flooring. The only cutting I did was to create 16-inch and 32-inch starter planks to offset the planks. Apparently, scoring the flooring with a sharp blade and snapping it off works. No power tools needed yet. I was making good time as I installed the flooring to the bedroom door. I ran into my first hiccup. That row ran through the door jamb. That’s okay, I would run two rows through the bedroom. I got as far as I needed to cut the last two boards to finish the rows. I would save that for later. I wanted to get the hallway done.
Here is where the real fun began. I wanted to make sure my one and only plank without a door jamb was cut exactly to fit to the wall. I measured the width and went downstairs in the basement to cut it on the table saw. Even though it was a fine blade for cutting plywood, it did a terrible job cutting the LVP plank. Fortunately, the cut would be covered. I installed it. In the process, the flooring shifted. I now had more room on this side of the wall than the other side, plus the floor was no longer parallel with the wall.
This headache continued as I cut and fit pieces under the door jambs, until I finally decided to put my sample pieces of flooring to work. I attached a piece of scrap flooring to one side. After I reset the floor so it was parallel to the wall, I screwed the scrap plank to the floor. I added another piece by the bedroom door. As I installed the flooring along the wall, I would again add a piece of scrap flooring to keep the floor parallel. This was necessary as I needed to really pound hard to snap the planks together around the door jambs.
In the process the planks in the bedroom got disconnected and that was fine. I could reattach them later. The hallway was my priority. I made it through three door jambs and decided what I saw on the videos did not work for me. I used my tape measure to mark instead of relying on marking with another plank. I even figured out a funky cut by the bedroom jamb. The door is angled to the hallway. I cracked the plank on my first try, but got it right on my second attempt. After that, I was tired and done. I would finish up the flooring another day.
The next date was not drama free. I wanted to mark the hallway as DONE. I needed to finish installing planks around all the other bedrooms. My thought was I could make sure the first plank into the room was square with the walls. The first two bedrooms went well, but the last bedroom, I forgot to put the shims back against the hallway wall across the bedroom. As I pounded away to lock in the plank under the door jamb, of course, the rows of planks shifted toward the wall. Suddenly the plank under the jamb had a gap. Since the plank was so tight against the wall, I could not get the tool behind it to pound it back in place. I used a chisel and a putty knife to pry the plank back in place. In the process I chipped the plank. The baseboard could not hide the boo-boo. I could have replaced it, but I decided to use some wood filler instead. Not a good decision or my best work. Nonetheless, I anticipated that this would not be the last of my imperfections.
Just when I thought I was done, I notice a gap by the bathroom door jamb. When did this happen? Since I knew the planks would slide, I proceeded to pound the far end of the row of planks in the bedroom, just hoping to move the plank back in place. So, when I wanted to move the planks, they would not budge. Not even an eighth of an inch. I also noticed the gap between the wall and the plank I was pounding on was too wide. Hitting it more would widen the gap, but I could replace that board easily. I eventually gave up and for now I put some wood filler to hide the gap. Number two bad decision. I was officially done!
