One of my favorite elements of our Playroom is the flooring we designed and installed. It is durable, fresh and fun yet was easy and inexpensive to install.
We want to share a tutorial to help others achieve a similar, custom look in their home.
Remember, this is what the room looked like BEFORE as a nursery. The carpet was from the previous owners and was in sad sad shape.
First we decided on a color scheme and selected our flooring. We purchased 12 x 12 vinyl Armstrong commercial tiles (Vinyl Composition Tile) in Soft Grey and Cool White.
Tyler worked out a striped pattern for the playroom floor by simply sketching the room to scale and determining where each stripe will lay. This helped us calculate how many tiles we needed in each color and size.
Once we had our design finalized, he cut the tiles using a table saw.
Next we cleared out the room and ripped out the baseboards, carpet and pad!
We used Chapco Floor Patch to fill the holes from the carpet tacks around the perimeter of the room and any other imperfections in the slab.
After allowing the patches to dry properly, Tyler swept cleaned the floors with water.
Next Tyler applied a coat of Henry Floor Adhesive to the entire playroom floor with a 1/16” trowel. He evenly spread the glue on the floor and was careful not to apply excess glue, which will bleed through joints if applied to heavy.
We let the adhesive sit and once it became tacky to the touch we began laying the tiles. Open times will depend on the product used so be sure to read labels carefully and follow instructions on your adhesive.
We already had our tiles cut so laying the pattern was an easy process. We followed Tyler’s drawings & notes and got to work!
We started with a full 12” white stripe and worked our way out from there. Be sure your first row of tiles is straight. You will lay all additional tiles against this first run so if it’s “off” then your floor will all be slightly askew.
After all of tiles were laid in the playroom and closet, we used a 100 pound linoleum roller to get good, even adhesion.
We let the glue dry for approximately 5 days and then sealed the floors with Armstrong Satinkeeper Resilient Low Gloss Floor Finish.
Then baseboards were installed and finished with caulk and putty.
We installed our playroom and are thrilled with the outcome!
You can see the entire playroom here.
The stripes were perfect for our space, but remember the pattern options are endless. VCT comes in such a wide variety of colors so you can come up with some some amazing designs.
Check back soon to see how we design the VCT floor in our girls’ bedroom!
brilliant allison! i love it so much! so did you step on the adhesive while it was sticky?
ReplyDeleteThanks Jamie! Yes you can step on the adhesive although we tried to avoid this whenever possible. I think wearing clean socks in the room may be a good way to walk in the space if needed. Just know that once you leave the sticky floors everything will stick to your socks ... so take them off first. :)
DeleteYou really did a wonderful job, I'm sure that your wife will be really happy with the new floor.
ReplyDeleteYour floor looks really great and VCT is certainly an easy product to work with. You should really look into the product further though. I work in the commercial design/construction industry and we have stopped specifying this product whenever possible.
ReplyDeleteIt is very bad for not only the environment at large, but for indoor air quality and the occupants of buildings. It has been banned in European schools for children under a certain age. It off-gasses terribly (which is why the joints separate over time)and in the case of a fire the gasses when mixed with water will create hydrochloric acid.
VCT is very inexpensive and many of our clients insist on using it, but we opt for linoleum or rubber whenever possible. Sorry to be such a downer, but I just wanted to put it out there because it is in a children's area.