Do you want to lay your own PVC floor? We don't turn our backs on that. we thought. But it turned out to be a little different than we had thought, and that was our own fault too. But we are one more experience richer. And because of our experiences, I can now explain to you how best to install a PVC click floor and what you should pay attention to. Hasn't all the research been in vain? By the way, I am talking about installing the click variant PVC floor and not the glued PVC variants. I wouldn't risk the latter myself.
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We try to do as much as possible ourselves in-house, that is well known by now. And because you can lay a PVC floor very well yourself, we had no doubts about this. We will do this together! Fortunately, Frank and I can do jobs together very well and we don't suffer much from irritations, which was certainly useful in this case.
We had a dark tiled floor in our house, as you can see in the photo. I have never liked these tiles and it was therefore a logical step to choose a new floor to lay after the renovation. After some deliberation, we arrived at a PVC floor in a concrete look and then the click variant. But we decided to leave our tiled floor. Actually, purely because we didn't feel like removing the entire floor during this major renovation. It was already quite a job and with the removal of the entire floor almost impossible to oversee.
In our case, not only does the tiled floor have to be removed, but also the entire ground floor has to be renewed because the insulation is not really top. A huge job of course and not for now. It's that simple. So we decided to lay a PVC floor over the tiles. Unfortunately, the tiles are extremely uneven and the PVC floor cannot be placed directly on the tiles.
You may have read on various websites that a PVC floor can be laid over tiles. Just don't think that you will succeed without leveling the PVC floor first. It may seem convenient and you think you can finish faster, but in the end you will regret this. A tiled floor really shows too many irregularities to just lay a PVC floor over it.
So it had to be leveled first. For a while we considered handing this over to us, but in the end we also did this ourselves. A blog about this will follow later, because I can give plenty of tips about that too. After levelling, the floor is flat enough to lay our chosen vtwonen floor over it, so we can get started.
As you know, men don't like to read manuals. Neither does Frank. He prefers to get started right away and normally that goes well. Before we start laying the floor, he realizes that it might be useful to watch some videos about PVC floors.
It doesn't look all that difficult in the videos. It is a matter of measuring, cutting the PVC floorboards with a stanley knife and hoppa, you can lay another part. So we open the first pack of the PVC floor and start with a good portion of confidence. We laid that floor in no time!
Hint: before you start laying, it is smart to first map out the space. Are you going to lay the floor lengthways or widthways? Once you've determined that, measure the space from wall to wall where your floor comes in between. Divide this by the width (or length) of your floorboards. Do you only have a very small piece left? Then it is better not to start with an entire floor part against the wall, because then you will be left with a narrow part and that is not very nice. It is better than to start with half a floorboard and then finish with a half floorboard.
In practice it seems to be a bit different and that has to do with the quality of our PVC floor. If you buy a cheap PVC floor, you can assume that cutting with a stanley knife is an option. But the moment you go for quality in the short and long term, you can forget about that stanley knife. And keep in mind that with a cheaper PVC floor, it will scratch and damage much faster than a quality floor.
We tried it and cut 2 floorboards with a stanley knife. To start, you have to push very hard and cut 3x over the same line to make a little impression on this PVC floor. Then you should break off the cut piece, but the PVC floor is really too thick and hard for that. In all cases, the fracture simply did not cross the cut line neatly. So that had to be different. We ended up buying a small handheld circular saw and it works perfectly!
Just neatly measure what needs to be removed from your click floor (for example on the wall side). Then you have neatly sawn off with the hand circular saw in no time. On the Youtube videos you can also see that they measure with another floorboard on it, and then cut directly along it with the stanley knife. Our experience is that you often go wrong with the brass side and actually cut too wide.
Tip:keep about 4-5 mm free from the wall so that - if something starts to work - your floor is not too tight.
Another 'trick' that you have to learn is sliding in and tapping the click variant floorboards if you are going to install the PVC floor yourself. It is recommended to do this with at least two people. First you make sure that the short side of the floor part fits exactly with the PVC floor that is already in place. Then you lift the already lying row of floorboards slightly and slide the new floorboard against it as much as possible. The chance that you will fit it in immediately is not that great, so it has to be tapped a bit.
For this we use a rubber hammer and a piece of waste from a floorboard that still has a tongue and groove side. Hold this piece exactly fitting against the floorboard and then tap it with the hammer. Do this in 2 places along the length and you have laid another piece.
We had to get the hang of it, but once you know how to work best, it's doable.
Tip:Start away from you and always work from left to right. In any case, this works best with these quality floors from Ambiant.
Do you not want to do the work yourself and do you decide to have the PVC laid by someone else? That is of course always possible. Then count on the fact that the costs can vary from € 18.00 to € 30.00 per m².
With a floor area of more than 180 m², I'm glad we decided to install the PVC floor ourselves. The sooner we can start another job 😉 .
Have you ever laid a PVC floor yourself? And if so… how were your experiences?
