Here’s a link to the flooring we purchased.
Yesterday afternoon, we headed to Home Depot with Vero’s parents as they have a better eye for how to match colours. Specifically, we wanted to get some kitchen flooring that would look good next to the laminate flooring we put down in June. We weren’t planning on purchasing it right away and had not even measured the kitchen. We were merely looking at styles/colours.
OF COURSE there had to be a flooring sale on (10% off) and we found an excellent looking style of Cyprus in the TrafficMaster Plank Flooring section. Months ago, I was at Krista’s parents house in Peterborough and her father was showing me the new flooring he had installed and how easy it was. It was a floating floor in the form of vinyl planks. No need to glue to the existing floor…simply place the plank down, make sure it fits snugly to the other planks and voila, you have yourself a floor!
So we then headed to BMR to compare (they had none) and we brought Vero’s mom to Costco and then I realized that we better get home soon if I were going to make it back to Home Depot in time to take advantage of the sale. Vero and I measured the kitchen and I picked up 5 packs of flooring. At $50 a pop, it was a good deal.
When I got home, Vero’s Dad had returned from visiting his brother and I could see he shared the same twinkle in our eye…we wanted to see how easy it was to lay this stuff out! We decided to rip open a pack just to see how it worked. I had to return to Home Depot to get some two-way tape (which in fact, we did not use if anyone is reading this wondering if they need to lay out the two-way tape) and when I got home Gaetan had laid out a few strips and was in the process of measuring an angle cut.
Let me tell you, for those wondering how easy this process is…it’s quite easy. Especially when we brought out tin snips to use instead of the utility knife. Tin snips probably saved us an hour of work. We got into a routine of measuring the cut, passing the plank to me, I cut it while Gaetan measured the next piece. Once I was done my cut, we laid the plank down so it connected well the other plank, and voila, a row was done!
We literally had half the kitchen done within 1.5 hours and we stopped for dinner just before encountering what may or may not be the deal-breaker…the dishwasher. After dinner we took a look at the dishwasher and realized that it would be a pain to take it out as there was no give on the hose. So we decided to simply cut one piece and put it under the dishwasher but if anyone ever hauls the entire thing out, they will see a section of the old flooring. So be it…it’s under the dishwasher.
After that, it was a fairly simple job for the rest of the night. We moved the stove and fridge out of the way, laid out the vinyl flooring and by 10PM, we were laying in the last piece. We had JUST enough flooring to cover the entire kitchen. We needed another plank for the final piece but we weren’t about to spend another $50 to get one more plank so we used some scraps and if anyone pulls the fridge out, they’ll notice an odd looking piece on the floor.
I don’t think any of us were planning on laying out some flooring last night but five hours later, it was done and the kitchen looks fabulous. I would highly recommend working with the TrafficMaster Allure vinyl flooring for any project as it is quite easy to work with which just makes the job fun.
Thanks to Gaetan for the helping hand. I was quite happy to have him there as he has a mind for the trades so it made the job go that much faster. Whereas if it were just me, I would be a little slower on the uptake, but would still be able to figure it out!
Next up is to paint the kitchen and I am thinking I would like to try my hand at doing a back splash out of ceramic tiles. Also on the horizon is painting out bedroom as we are receiving a furniture set on Thursday. After that, I’m hoping that our work will be done for awhile, but I do realize that there’s still that front step to fix up…