Anyone have/seen up close vinyl flooring?

We are starting some renos on our place next week and can't figure out what to do about flooring in the back of the house.

Bit of background (the short version) we brought this place a few years ago and always planned on some cosmetic renos. Then the back section of the house started to fall down around our ears (slight exaggeration but it was pretty bad) so we had to spend $20k on underpinning the back of the house. As a result (and two babies later) not much else has been done.

We finally have the money to do the cosmetic repairs (all the cracks in the plaster, cornices etc) and we are also replacing all our doors, skirting boards and door frames with high profile stained timber. We're kinda going for a federation type look.

Anyhoo...back to the flooring. We currently have tiles throughout. They aren't too bad but show up the dirt and are a bit dated and chipped in places.

The biggest issue is our main living area. Because the extension on the back of the house wasn't done properly, the floor is uneven and to cover this the previous eejit owner put one of those gold carpet edging strip thingos all the way along the join. It looks hideous, everyone is constantly tripping over it and it is a permanent reminder that we brought a bit of a lemon :wall: There is also a raised tiled section in the corner of the room where a fireplace used to be and we want to get rid of that too.

DH wants to put in a floating timber floor. I'm not sold. PIL had theirs done about 2 years ago and it has not worn well. It is quite scratched and I'm worried how it will hold up with three young children in a heavy traffic area. I've seen quite a few and some of them look...well fake and cheap iykwim. Another reason I don't want it is the expense. We are not staying here long term and I kinda don't want to spend any more money on this place than we have to.

I suggested carpet but DH is not keen. We are planning on moving in a year or two and the house will be rented out at that point if all goes according to plan. He has heard horror stories of tenants trashing carpet and is also concerned about wear and staining with the three kids. I see his point but carpet is so much cheaper to replace (we will be selling eventually).

So, I suggested we have a look at vinyl flooring. We'd probably go for the timber plank stuff. I've checked out a few websites and it honestly doesn't look too bad. It's apparently hard wearing and easy to clean.

Does anyone have it in their home or has anyone seen it up close?

OK, so that wasn't such a short version but any opinions would be welcome!

Hey love :). I have seen it up close in a store because we were considering it for our kitchen area. These days vinyl looks so good (well, I reckon anyway ;)). I think it would look great in our kitchen, but DH is worried about long-term wear with our three kids (we plan on staying here for a long time). We have floor boards under our tiles so we are thinking of ripping up the tiles and polishing the boards, depending on their condition.

Good luck and have fun deciding!!

we have vinyl but u have to be careful with sharp things on the floor we have a few rips in our floor from moving furniture

J - Thanks for your reply

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we have a few rips in our floor from moving furniture

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Wouldn't really be an issue for us. We haven't moved furniture since we've been here and have a modular lounge suite so we can really only have the room set out the way it is now. Although with small children, I can't guarantee there wouldn't be any rips! LOL.

Trish - I agree. I was surprised how good the modern stuff looks.

We're going to head out to a few flooring places tomorrow to have a look but that's always hard with three little ones in tow!

yeah its mostly in the kitchen where we had the issues with the fridge

I've only seen vinyl flooring in magazines and it looks quite good.

I've always liked cork and it's apparently environmentally friendly and you can get all sort of effects in it these days like parquetry. I'm not sure how well it wears but I like the fact that it looks and feels warm.

Hi,

We recently "did up" DS2 bedroom so that it looked like a little boy's nursery, and we replaced the carpet with some of the vinyl timber look planking - we think it looks fantastic! Its held in place by double sided tape, and DH was able to do it himself in only a few hours (he's a builder though, so has all the right tools and equipment needed for cutting it quicker, neater etc than just a stanley knife like they say will also do the trick). If I knew how to post a pic of it on here I would.....but I haven't figured it out yet!

We actually love it so much, that we're going to re-do right throughout our house with the same stuff, going directly over the tiles that are already down. The tiles we have are just so hard to keep clean with 2 kids (they're an off-white gloss - can you imagine!) so we are hoping this timber look stuff will be softer and hide a lot of the smudges marks a bit better.

the beauty of it also is that as I said, it can go straight over the top of what is already down (as long as its reasonably flat - it should be fine over our tiles).

We're certainly happy with how ours looks anyway. I don't think you'll be disappointed!

My work has the timber plank vinyl flooring in the shop area. It looks exactly like wood, in fact customers comment on it every day and can't believe it's vinyl when I tell them. I would have it in my house if it wasn't so expensive. They type we have is very thick and wouldn't tear if furniture was moved on it. It seriously looks like wood.

I can't for the life of me remember the brand of it (the tiler did give me a brochure which I've lost) but I was talking to the guy who installed it, he said he has it right through his house and it's hard wearing, easy to clean and looks great.

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I would have it in my house if it wasn't so expensive.

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Bugger...I was thinking it would be a cheaper alternative to a floating floor??

Rilady - If you don't mind me asking, can you remember approx how much it was?

I had this throughout my house that I built. If you aren't going to be there long term I think it's a great idea....I would have thought it be cheaper than the floating click together flooring.....BUT.....

You'd have to make sure that your floor is even....KWIM? Mine was placed direct onto a concrete pad, and you could see little bits of dirt that weren't cleaned off the floor properly kind of showing through (no big deal though). Also like JwithJ said, you have to be careful as it's pretty soft stuff so dropping things on it can poke holes through.

Not sure, maybe they have varying thicknesses you can choose from, but I'd say the thicker the better!

Mine was timber plank and it looked great! It holds onto dust though!!

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Bugger...I was thinking it would be a cheaper alternative to a floating floor??

Rilady - If you don't mind me asking, can you remember approx how much it was?

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I just asked DH and he said approx retail price for what we've got was about $47/square metre (we got it a bit cheaper though as he's a trade customer).

He said it was a truckload cheaper than some of the floating timber floor out on the market. I have no idea about prices of all these sort of things, but I know for a fact he wouldn't have gone with it if it was too expensive.

Like I said, we think ours looks great, it looks like timber until you walk on it and realise its softer under your feet, but still has that timber look about it. Plus, its supposed to be pretty hard wearing stuff.

I know we've seen some cheaper alternatives as well, however we've been told they're basically a waste of money because some of them will rot the minute anything is spilled on them (unless they're wiped and dried IMMEDIATELY), especially urine (again, definitely a no go for us, with 2 little ones & toilet training!).

That's great rilady, thank you!!

I've already seen online that it comes in different quality and thickness, so we'll look in to all that tomorrow. We may also be able to get it at trade price because the builder who is doing our renos is an old family friend of DH's.

We are only doing a smallish area too so it should be affordable enough. I was thinking about putting it in our laundry too which is off our main living area but not sure if it's suitable for wet areas...will check that out tomorrow too.

Ok, I'm hoping this works, I've tried to attach a pic of the floor in DS2's room to show you how it looks - we love it and so does everyone else who's seen it. They can't believe its vinyl until the look closely at it!

Ok, so I must not be allowed to attach pics in here since its been edited....oops, sorry about that!

My parents have it in the dining room and hallways, and I love it.

I have had wooden floors before, but this is so much easier to clean, and is nice to walk on..

I'm sorry rilady - your pic did work but I had to remove it as per forum guidelines.

P.S - it does look terrific though, I think I'll look into it for my place too!

Sorry about that Lulu - I obviously didn't read the forum guidelines very well, did I?!? :redface:

Nah, tis ok!

Hi Willow, we built our house 4 years ago and decided to go with Vinyl flooring throughout the whole house except for bedrooms rumpus and theatre, we even put it in our bathrooms and toilet & laundry. We love it soooooo much in fact we love it that much that we also installed it into our rental property when we renovated it.

We went with Karndean planks at our house. There are other brands though. I think that Karndean are one of the more expensive brands. We used a cheaper brand in the rental I cant remember the name of it sorry but it has worn well.

We have not had any problems with it at all, its easy to clean etc and if i ever built or renovated again I would definantly have it on my floor.

Everyone who comes to our house always comments on the floor, initially they think its wood and are so suprised when we tell them what it is, we have to actually show them a piece so that they believe us.
Personally I would not go with floating timber as it is softer and marks/dints easier. If you damage a piece in the centre of the room you have to lift the whole floor from the edge of the room to get to the piece thats damaged but with the vinyl floor you can cut out the piece thats damaged and replace it with another its that easy.
Sorry to carry on about it but I love it cant you tell.

We have vinyl and it's the best option for us - we wanted something that was cheapish so we weren't cringing with each scratch or crack. We will eventually replace the vinyl I guess, once the kids are older.

It dents, like if a kid has a bit of a 'moment' and throws their fork, it'll leave an indentation, and we have a small indent or two from bar stools falling over. I'd have to go looking for it to see it, so they're not obvious things. If you've been shifting heavy furniture, or in a high traffic area, if it's not glued down properly it can bubble a bit (not toooo hard to fix I don't think?).

It does look really good though.

Rilady, while you can't post pics, you're allowed to post a link to your pic if you'd like, that members can click on to see. :)

Willow - I had it in my laundry and because it wasn't secured enough to the floor, it would kind of 'ride up' when the washing machine spun....it would send my machine across the floor on it too like a magic carpet! So just watch out or ask about that.

i'm in a rental property with 1mm thick lino - it's awful. Very very cold, and there is one rip in the kitchen floor lino - looks like someone did it with a stiletto, but no, all it took was for one plate to fall out of the fridge by mistake.

we were SO careful moving furniture, haven't had any tears with that, but if I had chosen the lino, i would get the THICKEST one going! esp if you intend to rent it out. i try really hard to be a good tenant, but it's so hard when really crummy building materials have been used. (like NON WASHABLE PAINT!!!).

and choose a medium colour, NOT PALE, or WHITE

i've lived in a place with pretend wool lino - that was excellent.

I would personally stick to LARGE TILES for the wet areas.

I have lino at my house atm, and as a previous poster said you really do need straight floors for it. Ours shows up all the bumps from the uneven floorboards. It is tough wearing though, it has probably been there for about 30 years and doesn't have that many scuffs. You could lessen the effect of the uneven floor by getting a lino with a matt finish instead of gloss, and careful picking of patterns.

When we get around to renovating this place, we will probably put in a floating floor because the underlay is more forgiving with the unevenness. We have installed this before and it was reasonably hard wearing, although it did scratch a bit and we had to put felt pads under the chairs etc so they didn't scrap it.

Carpet isn't that bad an option. It will hide imperfections with the flooring nicely. Modern carpets take a lot of use before they wear, even in high use areas. As for tenants wreaking it, that is what bond and reference checks are for. But if it is the main walkway by the door then mud being trampled in is a pain, it is easier to have something you can mop.

I thought I would add that ours is wood look vinyl planks not staight vinyl so no problems with dinting, indentation or bubbling of any kind. We have also had animals on ours and kids pushing toys etc around.

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So, I suggested we have a look at vinyl flooring. We'd probably go for the timber plank stuff. I've checked out a few websites and it honestly doesn't look too bad. It's apparently hard wearing and easy to clean.

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We have this and I LOVE it!! I wasn't keen on the idea but now i've seen it and had it its great! Easy to clean and look after and looks good, easy to maintain!

Thanks for all the posts guys, I really appreciate it!

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ours is wood look vinyl planks not staight vinyl so no problems with dinting, indentation or bubbling of any kind.

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I agree, this is not the stuff that was around 20 years ago.

We looked at a product at Harvey Norman that we're pretty happy with. It is 3.5mm thick, timber finish planks. It comes with a lifetime warranty for residential use and was about $48 per square metre. We don't have straight floors in places (the builder is going to fix this for us with a leveling product) but the finish on this product is textured and I doubt it would show up much.

We will talk to our builder about it when he starts on Monday, but now that I've seen it, I'm in love! We're probably going to put it in the laundry too. It's 100% waterproof and can even be used in bathrooms (and depending on how it goes, we'll probably put it in our ensuite when we renovate that later in the year).

We looked at the floating floors there too and to be honest, this stuff looked so much better IMO.

Salad - I can see us eventually putting this in all our tiled areas, I think it's going to look fantastic!

Ours is brand new too - but I suspect that there are probably many different qualities available, and how well it's installed is key too. Given that we bought a cookie cutter house, I'd be surprised if much love and care went into the vinyl. :p Probably getting some recommendations and doing it as a separate job will make a difference.

Thanks Nelle. We'll talk to our builder before we go ahead with this brand, but the sales person at HN said it was their top of the range so hoping it'll be OK.

I might check out the brand Salad suggested too - thanks hun!

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We don't have straight floors in places (the builder is going to fix this for us with a leveling product) but the finish on this product is textured and I doubt it would show up much.

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We dont have straight/flat floors and you can see it depending on the angle you look at it. But if you aren't directly looking for it, you probably wouldn't notice it too much.

Thanks Sunshine.

It seriously couldn't be any worse than what we have now, but I'm sure our builder will be able to tell us if he thinks it's suitable or not.

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