Help me make the right flooring decision

[BDK]

Building a house and this is good info. I have a big dog and want the same flooring throughout the house, with the exception of the master bathroom. I don't want to do anything to the floors but occasionally trip over the robot vacuum/mop. Low maintenance and would like it to last.

Sounds like LVP is the best option for me.

I have a lot of darker wood furniture, and am using stained cabinets and stained barn doors throughout. Thinking of a oak color for the floors. Lighter colors don't show dog hair and dirt like dark floors, it lightens the house, and it will contrast nicely with the furniture.

 

[Etyler2]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a closer look at what LVP options there are at home Depot. The first ones I was looking at (cheaper of course) seemed to have some longevity issues but I'll see if they have some better quality options that may fit the bill.

Unfortunately tile is not an option, although I'd love to I don't have the skill to do it and don't have the funds to pay someone who would do it well. I'm in the $3-4/SQ ft budget right now.

Don’t buy HD cheap shit.

Can’t disclose my current location but I’m sitting down, and bought rugs to hide the crap I bought while I’m doing my business.

It’s all going in the trash.

 

[Projectjunkie]

I'm pretty set on T&G OSB as I won't have to do blocking under the joints. Is there a specific reason to consider plywood over the OSB that I might be missing?

I've definitely been following along on your build, I may start a thread on my wonderful mobile home as I progress.


Thanks again everyone for the advice, this is my current best option based on price and reviews, I got a box and will see how easy it goes together and will go from there.

Lifeproof Bradbury Hill Wood 22 MIL x 7.1 in. W x 48 in. L Click Lock Waterproof Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring (18.7 sqft/case) I114813L6 - The Home Depot

It's time to make a change; start by adding 100% waterproof LifeProof Rigid Core luxury vinyl flooring to your home or business. Flooring is the foundation to any building and that's why we've formulated

www.homedepot.com

Plywood can take a beating and dry out, osb isn't as durable. Plywood is more expensive, but worth it if you can swing it


What's up with the wall? Do you need to re level this bad boy?

 

[Leadfoot21]

LVP is the way to go but as also mentioned avoid any of the big box store junk or budget LVP it sucks . Good LVP is more durable than hardwood and tough . Budget LVP is a step above laminate and sucks .

 

[Provience]

Building a house and this is good info. I have a big dog and want the same flooring throughout the house, with the exception of the master bathroom. I don't want to do anything to the floors but occasionally trip over the robot vacuum/mop. Low maintenance and would like it to last.

Sounds like LVP is the best option for me.

I have a lot of darker wood furniture, and am using stained cabinets and stained barn doors throughout. Thinking of a oak color for the floors. Lighter colors don't show dog hair and dirt like dark floors, it lightens the house, and it will contrast nicely with the furniture.

Why not tile/concrete/stone for you, then

 

[TanTJJim]

Don’t buy HD cheap shit.

Can’t disclose my current location but I’m sitting down, and bought rugs to hide the crap I bought while I’m doing my business.

It’s all going in the trash.

My first option was on the lower end and from what I've gathered here I think I've got a higher quality option that should work. It's the LifeProof one someone else mentioned. Thanks for the feedback, I'm definitely trying to avoid those types of issues long term.

Plywood can take a beating and dry out, osb isn't as durable. Plywood is more expensive, but worth it if you can swing it


What's up with the wall? Do you need to re level this bad boy?

Thanks good to know, I was wondering why some prefer plywood when OSB seems to be industry standard.

It definitely needs releveling, should be able to do that this weekend. Based on the condition of the siding in that area I probably have some water damage to repair when I remove the cabinets too, will see tomorrow. Oh the joy of 30 year old mobile homes...

 

[TanTJJim]

Life proof from hd is good stuff a little expensive but nice, have put in a few 1000 sq feet and never had a problem. Not sure if by you but the local hd was clearing out “last years” lifeproof for 1.75 a sq ft,

Thanks, I think there's a good LifeProof option that I'm going to go with. No deals in store but the price is still reasonable.

 

[RunningProblem]

I'm going to start replacing the flooring in my kitchen and living room this weekend and have quickly realized the options are pretty overwhelming.

I think I've settled on either vinyl planking or good 'ole laminate flooring but want to make sure I avoid buying complete garbage so is there are any suggestions or specific things I should look for/avoid I'd appreciate it.

So far Pergo laminate looks like a good option in 12mm thickness or better and good water resistance due to kitchen use. I'll be using the same flooring in both kitchen and living room if possible.


Am I on the right track here or is there a better laminate option I may want to consider? Would vinyl planking be the better choice due to kitchen use or is laminate good enough?

Or am I just a complete idiot without enough bleach in my diet.

I have vinyl plank in about 75% of my house. Kitchen, family/dining, hallways and garage entry/laundry room. It doesn’t suck. It’s great for water proof. I don’t pour water on it and let it stay, but I have two boys and I’ve spilled plenty and it hasn’t been ruined.

It scratches.
Mine is some wood grand type look, and those wood grains hold material like grease, play dough, whatever.
I bought mine from lumber liquidators. I don’t know if it’s cheap stuff from there or not. Pretty sure it was their higher end, and I did the thicker under layment.
It’s cold. Possibly because I live on a slab. Not as cold as tile. Defiantly colder than hardwood or carpet. My parents have good hardwood and their floors never seemed as cold as mine.
It can get warm, but I have a sliding glass door and it hasn’t discolored due to heat/sun on a south facing house window and sliding glass door in three or four years.

If you’re going to do it I’d suggest ripping off the base boards. Cutting quarter round sucked, and I hate how cheap it makes everything look especially around the pantry door in the kitchen. It would probably look worse if I’d tried to trim the baseboards to slide the flooring under one side and put quarter round on the other.

 

[SomeGuy]

Has anyone tried the newage LVP?

Luxury Vinyl Planks Flooring at NewAge Products (CA)

Our stone composite Luxury Vinyl Planks are an elegant and durable choice for any space. Our stone composite flooring is free of heavy metals and phthalates, and is FloorScore Certified for indoor air emissions of VOCs including formaldehyde, so you can feel confident installing it in your home...

newageproducts.com

Super thick wear layer and rated for garage/commercial use which is interesting...

 

[RunningProblem]

I would if the link wasn’t malformed.

 

[2big bronco]

I'm pretty set on T&G OSB as I won't have to do blocking under the joints. Is there a specific reason to consider plywood over the OSB that I might be missing?

I've definitely been following along on your build, I may start a thread on my wonderful mobile home as I progress.


Thanks again everyone for the advice, this is my current best option based on price and reviews, I got a box and will see how easy it goes together and will go from there.

Lifeproof Bradbury Hill Wood 22 MIL x 7.1 in. W x 48 in. L Click Lock Waterproof Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring (18.7 sqft/case) I114813L6 - The Home Depot

It's time to make a change; start by adding 100% waterproof LifeProof Rigid Core luxury vinyl flooring to your home or business. Flooring is the foundation to any building and that's why we've formulated

www.homedepot.com

The life proff brand is what I did my entire house in an 7 years later with 2 dogs and 2 kids it still looks great.

Buy the gimicky tools they sell to install it and one of those small hammers with the different collor rubber on each side.

If 2 planks arnt going togeather perfectly (I mean perfectly) figure out wich is the problem one and just toss it. Sure you can force it, but the 2 spots I did that in my floor I can still notice it 7 years later.

Make sure your floor is flater then you want to get it before you start. Any small humps or bumps will show through and make install a bitch. I used a belt sander to smooth things out.

Buy the matching threshold strips for your doorways. If your house isnt perfectly square its a bitch running it seemless through rooms.

 

[Ransil]

I used Smart core LVP from Lowes its sucked, some went well some were a bitch to click together , took excessive hammering, sometimes the ends buckled and split, we did not end at the doors we did it in one layout , lots of backwards into other spaces but not too bad. we went darker than we should have it shows dust like every day.

used Lumber liquidators LVP in the RV about 8 year ago , small space bit haven't separated yet and is in all kind of weather, I had no install issues with it.

 

[sicumminsde]

My bet is that in 10-20 years LVP will go the way of shag carpet...it will look dated. Do it once and go solid hardwood. I did mill run hickory in my whole house. It wasn't too expensive and is holding up great.

 

[Provience]

My bet is that in 10-20 years LVP will go the way of shag carpet...it will look dated. Do it once and go solid hardwood. I did mill run hickory in my whole house. It wasn't too expensive and is holding up great.

LVP is utility, there's plenty of decent and good sheet vinyl as well that I'm not sure why more people don't use.

 

[Projectjunkie]

My bet is that in 10-20 years LVP will go the way of shag carpet...it will look dated. Do it once and go solid hardwood. I did mill run hickory in my whole house. It wasn't too expensive and is holding up great.

On the flipside, I used to have a similar mindset, and am pretty proud of the tile I laid in my childhood home in the 90s, and stalk the listings to see the tile I laid in my 1st home in 2004 was still looking good when the house last sold in 2023, but things change, styles change, and carpet and lvp isn't supposed to last forever, so do something for $2sqft and a weekend and redo it in 7 years.

Some people try to make carpet last forever, but 5 years seems to be the life cycle in rentals, and for a cheap as it is, no real reason to push it past that in a family home with kids and pets

I heard somebody comment on ikea furniture and how things aren't made to last like the good old days blah blah blah. The comment was, life changes, you get your first apartment, spend a week's wages on some new furniture that you use for 3-4 years, and live comfortably during that time, you build your career, you buy your 1st house, some of the apartment furniture gets given away thrown away, some makes the move, but you buy new shit that matches your new house, have babies, buy baby room furniture, then dump it and buy kindergartener furniture, etc

I bought my kids cheap shoes when they were little because they outgrew that shit faster than they'd fall apart. Now that they're plateuing (sp?) I buy them stuff that lasts longer, it is what it is. Yours looks great, and I'd be proud of it. But your wife might hate it in 2028 just because her sister got new $1.89sqft lvp

 

[Projectjunkie]

BTW OP, buy a cordless oscillating tool, if you don't already have one. It will be your most used tool replacing your subfloor and flooring

 

[2JZ]

I'm pretty set on T&G OSB as I won't have to do blocking under the joints. Is there a specific reason to consider plywood over the OSB that I might be missing?

I've definitely been following along on your build, I may start a thread on my wonderful mobile home as I progress.


Thanks again everyone for the advice, this is my current best option based on price and reviews, I got a box and will see how easy it goes together and will go from there.

Lifeproof Bradbury Hill Wood 22 MIL x 7.1 in. W x 48 in. L Click Lock Waterproof Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring (18.7 sqft/case) I114813L6 - The Home Depot

It's time to make a change; start by adding 100% waterproof LifeProof Rigid Core luxury vinyl flooring to your home or business. Flooring is the foundation to any building and that's why we've formulated

www.homedepot.com

Make sure you see it in person. We ordered our from Lowes and it's WAY darker than it looked on the website.

 

[TanTJJim]

The life proff brand is what I did my entire house in an 7 years later with 2 dogs and 2 kids it still looks great.

Great info, thanks for the suggestions!

BTW OP, buy a cordless oscillating tool, if you don't already have one. It will be your most used tool replacing your subfloor and flooring

I picked one of those up. It seems like everyone on YouTube may do things slightly different, but they all use that tool so there's definitely something to it.

Make sure you see it in person. We ordered our from Lowes and it's WAY darker than it looked on the website.

For sure, I almost never buy something sight unseen for that reason. The stuff I'm looking at is I'm stock so I should be set.

 

[Pocahontas]

You want to stagger you joints 6 inches apart and don't line up any joints within 4 planks. You can use the cut off end to start a new row and scrap pieces as a top block for getting the joints so seat or tapping the rows to be tight to an exposed transition or down a wall under a door ect. If something isn’t fitting find out why could be defective or there’s a small piece of something broken off inside the tongue.

 

[KenV]

Tagging into the comment about seeing the flooring in person, grab samples and test them out all over to see how they work with your lighting and furnishings.

 

[Ummduh]

Don’t buy HD cheap shit.

Can’t disclose my current location but I’m sitting down, and bought rugs to hide the crap I bought while I’m doing my business.

It’s all going in the trash.

You can most likely tap that back together. Not having installed it, but if it came apart it'll go back together.

Throw some glue on the tongue and use a rubber mallet to persuade it back.

 

[Ummduh]

You want to stagger you joints 6 inches appart and done line up any joints within 4 planks. You can use the cut off end to start a new row and scrap pieces as a top block for getting the joints so seat or tapping the rows to be tight to an exposed transition or down a wall under a door ect. If something isn’t fitting find out why could be defective or there’s a small piece of something broken off inside the tongue.

General rule of thumb is whatever the width of the plank is, is what you should have for minimum butt stagger. And watch those H's.

But yea, end pieces become starter pieces. Cut them short(er) if needed to get a good flow.


We used 15 and/or 30 lb felt paper to shim under for low spots, stapled down if needed. Your finished product is a result of prep work.

 

[WTF?]

I laid 1800 sf of LVP down in my house a couple years ago with zero regrets. Kitchen LR, halls bedrooms& closets.

I fell in love with lvp doing bathrooms in a flip house after laying 1200 sf of wood laminate. The lvp install is so much easier and less messy. Lvp is also more forgiving of imperfections in the subfloor, a belt sander with a 60grit belt is your friend for taking out lumps.

I went with a product sold by a local flooring wholesale shop that felt similar in quality to the premium stuff at lowes/hd for about half the price.

It’s not real hardwood, and it’s not supposed to compete with that; it’s 1/3 the cost of hardwood. From a price point it competes with carpet/ laminate, and the low maintenance/ water resistance and durability of lvp won out for me.

 

[TanTJJim]

Good call on the staggering and prep. It'll be a little while before I'm ready for LVP install but subfloor replacement is going well. So far I have one floor joist that's about 1/4" higher than all the rest, need to figure out the cause of that, fix it, then start final install of the current OSB and finish out the rest. Looks like this at the of today.

 

[kmkommes]

Has anyone tried the newage LVP?

Luxury Vinyl Planks Flooring at NewAge Products (CA)

Our stone composite Luxury Vinyl Planks are an elegant and durable choice for any space. Our stone composite flooring is free of heavy metals and phthalates, and is FloorScore Certified for indoor air emissions of VOCs including formaldehyde, so you can feel confident installing it in your home...

newageproducts.com

Super thick wear layer and rated for garage/commercial use which is interesting...

I tried to link newage above in post 13 but the link didnt work for me either. Not sure why it's all messed up.

I put it down in my bathroom and hall by the garage. It is super thick and heavy. Probably twice that of any normal LVP. I laid it right over my old vinyl. With the old flooring under it, It matches height near perfectly with my 3/4 hardwood.

We really like it and in my opinion looks better in person than in pics.

I have all their $5,000 garage cabinet setup as well. I watch for them weekly on marketplace because I want more.

 

[Projectjunkie]

Good call on the staggering and prep. It'll be a little while before I'm ready for LVP install but subfloor replacement is going well. So far I have one floor joist that's about 1/4" higher than all the rest, need to figure out the cause of that, fix it, then start final install of the current OSB and finish out the rest. Looks like this at the of today.

This just got exciting!


Go address any leveling issues right now right now, you've gotta do it, take the day and get it done
I didn't want to on my single wide, I did the renovation, then leveled it, and had to address doors that didn't open and close right, lvp in a hallway that stretched apart, etc.

Now I'm in my new house, a pier and beam stick built house, and I'm leveling it first, gotta be done

 

[SomeGuy]

I tried to link newage above in post 13 but the link didnt work for me either. Not sure why it's all messed up.

I put it down in my bathroom and hall by the garage. It is super thick and heavy. Probably twice that of any normal LVP. I laid it right over my old vinyl. With the old flooring under it, It matches height near perfectly with my 3/4 hardwood.

We really like it and in my opinion looks better in person than in pics.

I have all their $5,000 garage cabinet setup as well. I watch for them weekly on marketplace because I want more.

Weird, but good to see that it's a solid product...that's what it sounded like based on what I've read, but there aren't tons of reviews on it.

I want to be able to come downstairs in my work shoes from the garage if I need to, I'm going to have a second small shop there and my compressor/supplies are down there too, so wanted to keep a durable flooring that I could walk on without taking shoes off.

I might do some of their garage cabinets in the basement shop, but also considering Montezuma (they make those triangle boxes) because they've reached out to do a brand deal for my youtube channel with a new product they are launching, so if that goes well, I might ask for more lol

 

[TanTJJim]

This just got exciting!


Go address any leveling issues right now right now, you've gotta do it, take the day and get it done
I didn't want to on my single wide, I did the renovation, then leveled it, and had to address doors that didn't open and close right, lvp in a hallway that stretched apart, etc.

Now I'm in my new house, a pier and beam stick built house, and I'm leveling it first, gotta be done

Absolutely, I'm going to level it this weekend before I final install all the new subfloor to see if it helps with the few joists that aren't perfectly level with the rest. Was hoping to get it done this last weekend but we focused on other things while I had a buddy there to help.

I did start taking measurements and there's really just one corner of the house that's up to 1.5" lower than the rest. . Should just be about 4 piers that need raising and it should be damn close. The rest of the house is looking solid so far.

Our division is called "Rolling Hills" and a neighbor jokes it's for a reason.

 

[TanTJJim]

I can't believe it's been over a month since I started this project but finally started on the LVP install yesterday, here's how it's turning out:

I did decide on the LifeProof brand and am glad I did, it certainly appears to be a quality floor and once you get the feel for it was really easy to install.
All the advice in here hit the nail on the head, getting the LifeProof install tools I think are essential for a good install and made the job very easy. An oscillating tool was far more useful than I'd have ever thought.

The house is level but I do have some variation in floor joist heights that I shimmed out the best I could and I'm glad I did. I wasn't shooting for perfect, but +/- 1/8" over 8ft was the goal which should be good enough for longevity of the floor. One joist was 1/2" higher than the rest . Glad I got that sorted out.


Up next is the same project in the bedrooms. Here's what either poor quality LVP, or installing it on floors with too much variation looks like (this was put in by the PO owner of the house):

I'd only consider myself maybe 2 steps above a hack but the stuff the PO did makes me cringe. Good thing I have a big dumpster to throw all the old stuff in .

Thanks again to everyone for the advice, I'm really happy with how it turned out!

 

[Pocahontas]

If it’s not a small room you can always pull it up and use it somewhere else.