Vinyl floor installation

Note: Chronologically, this post and the first cabinets posts are out of order, as I forgot to publish this post, before I published the other one.  Oops!

Friday night, Sarah helped me wrestle the 12' long, 140lb roll of vinyl floor into kitchen.  Saturday morning, her dad came over, and the 3 of us managed to roll the floor out to its' final location.  Because it was not yet cut the size, it curled up the walls on 3 sides.  Carefully, methodically, and with a new sharp knife blade, I trimmed it section by section until, suddenly...  There was a floor.

Cat Not Included

For the seam, I tried the "double cut" method using my 4' level as a straightedge.  The idea was to lay the two pieces on top of each other, where the seam would be, and cut through both at the same time, so that the cuts would be perfectly lined up.  You make your cut through the grout line of the 2 pieces, and it should all come out perfectly.  Unfortunately, the level was thick enough that I couldn't hold the knife vertical, and, well, it didn't come out so well.  I did it again, this time using my drywall T-square, and it came out much, much better.

For some reason, I was more apprehensive about rolling on the adhesive than I was about cutting the floor.  Illogical, because the adhesive isn't permanent, and if I somehow messed up putting the floor down, you just pull it up and re-position it.

My father-in-law rolling on the adhesive

Thankfully, applying the floor adhesive to the underlayment was ridiculously easy.  I'm glad I got the roll-on adhesive, rather than the trowel-on kind.  We rolled 2/3 of the flooring back to expose the floor, and just started rolling on the adhesive like it was paint.  Within 15-20 minutes, the adhesive was on.  Let it sit for an hour until the glue is tacky, then carefully roll the floor onto the adhesive-laden underlayment.  Roll back the other 1/3 of the floor, roll on the adhesive, dry for an hour, and roll the floor back down onto the adhesive.

After the floor is done, you go rent your 100lb floor roller from Home Depot (about $20-$25), and roll from the middle out to the edges, both directions (north-south and east-west).

All in all, installing the floor was one of the faster and easier portions of the project.  We started around 9:30am, and were done by 2:30pm, and that included eating lunch, driving to get the floor roller, and waiting two hours for adhesive to dry.

What's next?  Believe it or not, it's time to start actually hanging cabinets!

Bonus Cat Picture - Actually shows the floor texture quite nicely