Flooring Repair and Luxury Vinyl Plank Installation in Logan, Utah and Cache Valley

Most luxury vinyl plank is a floating floor. The planks click together along their edges and are not glued or nailed to the floor below, so the whole floor can move a little as the house warms and cools.

The floor underneath has to be flat. Two vinyl plank install guides give the same limit: no more than 3/16 inch of dip or hump across 10 feet, or 1/8 inch across 6 feet. Low spots get patched and high spots taken down before the first plank goes in.

A floating floor also needs room at its edges. The guides call for a gap of about 1/4 to 5/16 inch around the walls, hidden under the baseboard or a trim strip. Heavy fixed things stay off it: one guide says plainly not to install cabinets or fixed objects on top of the flooring, so the planks run up to the cabinets and stop there.

Acclimation is where guides differ. One maker wants its planks to sit in the room for 48 hours at 65 to 85°F before they go down. Another says its rigid-core plank needs no acclimation at all but must go in between 55 and 85°F. The guide for the plank you choose is the one that counts, so keep a box label or the product name handy.

These are the everyday reasons a floor ends up on the to-do list:

The kitchen had worn gold and cream patterned sheet vinyl between a white range and blue gloss cabinets. The old vinyl stayed where it was, and rustic wood-look vinyl plank went down right over it.

The first rows were fitted along the cabinets, with loose planks laid out across the old floor ahead of the work. Row by row the plank covered the room until one last strip of the old pattern showed. The new floor now runs the length of the galley kitchen, through the dining nook by the window, past the refrigerator and on into the back entry by the kitchen door.

Where the kitchen meets the next room, a matching transition strip finishes the doorway. Install guides call for trim or transition strips on every exposed edge, set so they don't pin the floating planks down. This job is also in our recent projects.

The price depends on the square footage, what has to come out first, how flat the floor underneath is, the cuts around cabinets, vents and door jambs, how many doorways need transitions, and whether appliances have to move. You get the full price before work starts, the job is scheduled for a set day, and it is cleaned up when it's done.

If the floor is part of a bigger project, it can be quoted together with bathroom and tile work or trim and baseboards. Members of the Home Maintenance Membership get 10% off labor on quoted jobs like this. We work on homes in Logan, around Cache Valley and in Southeast Idaho; see the towns we serve.