So, this means we’re talking about basements, crawlspaces, and attics mainly–accessible places where you can get to the joists without ripping apart half of your house.

Now, none of my advice about how to strengthen joists applies to houses that have severe problems.  Things like:

• Deep cracks in the joists.
• Sags lower than a couple of inches.

Wood Shims

Method 1 – Wood Shims

Using the wood shim method is a stop-gap fix.  Better to sister with a new joist, if possible.

Underneath, you hammer in wood shims between the floor joist and the bottom of the floorboards or subfloor.  “Whoa!” you say.  That’s not strengthening the floor joists; that’s something else!

Indeed.  This is a quick-and-dirty method.  What this does is help force a gap between the joist and floor, raising the floor somewhat.  This works for slight sags.

Method 2 – Sister with New Joist

So, this is a bit harder, but it is more effective.

• Buy a floor joist the same length as the sagging or weak joist.
• Lay new floor joist alongside the old one.  You will not be removing the old joist.
• Make sure new joist is resting next to the same contact points as the old joist.
• Option A:  Raise up old joist with a 40 ton house jack until it is level or close to level; OR,
• Option B:  Do not raise up old joist.  Keep the sag in place, and merely strengthen instead of level out the joist.
• Attach the new floor joist to the old joist with 2 1/2″ screws, driven every 8 inches.

By contrast, vinyl tile (i.e., usually twelve inches square) seems like a walk in the park.  What could be easier?  Slice the stuff apart with a utility knife, and you’re done.  Right?

Difficult to Cut with Utility Knife

Not so fast.  Sure, you can cut with a utility knife–and even using a tile cutter, you’ll still be using a utility knife for many cuts–but problems do happen:

• Wiggly cuts due to your straightedge moving.
• Unsightly seams and gaps because you did not position your utility knife perpendicular to the tile when cutting.
• And that other minor detail–injury.

A vinyl tile cutter works just like a paper cutter.  Stick the tile in and slice away!  An accurate, straight, and perpendicular cut every time.  But is it worth buying the thing?

Buy a Vinyl Tile Cutter?

I would say yes.  You can rent a vinyl tile cutter, and even though rental charges are cheap, it really limits your tile installation time.  With any kind of rental, you know that another day is another dollar (or ten).

So, the real entry-level El Cheapo is this one, the Roberts Quick-Cut Vinyl Tile Cutter, which takes tiles up to twelve inches square.  It’s available at your local orange-and-white big box home improvement store and lots of other places, as well.

When I checked it was fifty bucks.  Now, it’s not a fine piece of machinery, by any means.  I suspect that it will get you through 3 rooms before falling apart into a million pieces, but what did you expect?  It’s not like you’re going to start your new vinyl tile installation career with this thing.

One of the reasons you bought sheet vinyl flooring in the first place is its seamless nature.  With tile vinyl floor, you have seams everywhere.  These seams are bad because they can let moisture seep through down to the underlayment.  It should be noted that most seams hold up well–but there is always the possibility of failure.

By contrast sheet vinyl has almost no seams.  Good for daily living, bad for trapping in air bubbles.

Bubbles under sheet vinyl flooring occur during installation, not after.

Keep in mind that the following method only works for relatively small bubbles (up to 6″ diameter).  Larger bubbles require you to cut out a section of the flooring and replace.

Renting a 100 pound roller is a good idea is you want the job done right.  Our improvised “ironing” method mentioned in this article doesn’t work nearly as well.  You can rent a roller for almost nothing at any local rental yard.

To get rid of these trapped pockets of air under your vinyl, use a canvas needle (a sewing needle used for sewing canvas) or even the tip of an X-acto knife or utility knife, and puncture the bubble.

Most people will not happen to have a floor installer’s 100 pound roller on hand, but if you do, go ahead and use it to flatten the bubble.  Lacking a roller, you can kneel on a short piece of 2×4 wrapped in a towel, and “iron” it out.

Complete by sealing up with a vinyl flooring seam sealer found at most hardware stores.

Cork flooring is 100% natural, no additives, resins.  It comes from southern Europe and northern Africa, and yes, it really is cork–just like the cork in your wine bottles.  Cork bark is very thick, so after about 10 years, it can be sliced away from the tree and used to plug up your Chateau Rothschild…or your kitchen floor.

Cork floor feels just like padded vinyl flooring when it’s installed.  It does have a certain “soft” feeling or bounce under foot, though not as much as you might expect.  Do not expect this to feel like those resilient rubber mats that you find at gyms.

Cork does not do well in highly moist places like bathrooms or any place where the humidity is 65% or more.  If you must install in bathrooms, make sure you have good ventilation.

Cork Flooring Sizes

Just like with its sister resilient flooring, vinyl, you’ll find that cork flooring comes in the usual dimensions:

• 12″x12″ wide
• 24″x24″ wide
• Plank-size cork at 12″x36″

Cork planks are not cork through-and-through.  Cork planks have fiberboard in the middle of a cork “sandwich” for greater structural stability.

Thicknesses of cork are:

• 3/16″
• 5/16″

Preparing Subfloor for Cork

You won’t find a lot of cork-specific subfloor instructions.  You’ll pretty much want to prepare the subfloor/underlayment just as you would any wood or concrete.

Make sure that either base is clean, flat, smooth, and level.

Moisture can really damage cork flooring, so make sure that the concrete has a moisture level of no more than 5% before installation.

Cork Flooring Finishes

One thing that homeowners may not know is that cork flooring is finished much in the same way that wood flooring is finished.  You can stain cork flooring.  In fact, you can even manually sand portions of cork flooring lightly, if using very fine paper such as 150-grit.  No, you won’t want to sand the entire cork floor; just a few spots that might need it.

Cork flooring will take conventional polyurethene finish (again, just as you would do for wood flooring).

If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can even finish your cork flooring with wax.  Apply paste wax to the cork surface; buff it out; apply again and buff again.

Methods – From Hard to Easy

The catch here is that you must be installing the sheet vinyl on plywood underlayment.  Obviously, if you’re installing on concrete slab, staples are not an option.  From hard to easy:

• Adhesive only
• Adhesive plus staples
• Adhesive on perimeter only
• Staples only – perimeter

We’re just dealing with the last one.

Not Your Usual Stapler

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to use that spring-loaded stapler hanging in the garage.  It’s not so much the vinyl flooring you have to content with; it’s the plywood.  You won’t be able to drive staples into plywood with your manual stapler.

You need to either buy or rent a power stapler that can drive staples with a minimum 3/8″ length.  Make sure that the staple can be fully driven in, without the top of the staple showing.

How to Staple Sheet Vinyl Flooring

Think that stapling down sheet vinyl is a no-brainer?  Well, it pretty much is.  But there are a few rules of procedure you’ll need to follow, else you end up with bulges.

1. Make sure the sheet vinyl is completely smooth, with no bulges.
2. Drive staples about 1/4″ from the edge of the vinyl.
3. Occasionally, take your nose out of your work and make sure that the entire floor is staying smooth.
4. Complete an entire wall.
5. Next, staple the adjoining wall–not the opposite wall.  Stapling the opposite wall will cause problems later on.

In case you didn’t know–and why should you?–resilient flooring is the oh-so-sensitive term nowadays for the more hated term, vinyl flooring.  Got that?  Moving on…

Concrete

Roughening a Concrete Floor Before Vinyl Floor Installation

Smooth, level, patched, and dry concrete subfloor can be used directly for resilient flooring.  No underlayment needed.

Plywood

Plywood Subfloor

Half-inch or greater underlayment graded for such use by the American Plywood Association.

Existing Vinyl Floor

Yes, You Can Put Vinyl Over Vinyl

Sorry, did I use the word vinyl?  I mean resilient flooring.

Clean resilient flooring on a good base can be used as the subfloor for new resilient flooring.

Do Not Use as a Subfloor

• Wood floorboards
• Particleboard
• Hardboard
• Exterior-grade plywood
• Cement-based backer board
• Asphalt tile
• Rubber tile

A:  You’re more apt to find an objective rating system with older, more established types of building products than you are with laminate flooring.  Laminate flooring is still a fairly new industry and, as such, there are no true rating systems in place.

NALFA – What About Them?

NALFA stands for the North American Laminate Flooring Association, and is the closest thing you will find to a laminate floor rating system.  But be careful here.  This is like the fox watching the chicken coop.

NALFA is simply an industry-supported group that has no objective take on laminate flooring rating.  The manufacturers police themselves.

Given the fact that there is so much bad laminate flooring on the market–and I mean outright illegal bootleg laminate from lovely places like China–it really is a good idea to make sure that your laminate product is certified.

In all fairness, this is not much different than anything else in the building materials industry.  Face it, this is not like the Fed supervising federal banks or anything.  It’s a loosely run industry with moderate standards.

You can sum up NALFA in one sentence from their website:  ‘…the NALFA seal sells.’  NALFA’s ratings are about selling, not about protecting consumers.

NALFA Laminate Rating – Better Than Nothing

Still, NALFA’s ratings are not complete bullshit. If a laminate flooring manufacturer wants their product to get the NALFA seal they must face, what the NALFA site calls, “a rigorous and demanding series of tests designed to evaluate its performance, durability, strength, and overall quality.”

To their credit, NALFA is transparent about the details of these tests (Laminate Flooring Specifications and Test Methods 2008), which must be performed by an independent laboratory.  Some of the things covered in the tests are:

• Static load
• Thickness swell
• Light resistance
• Cleanability

And many other categories.

NALFA-Approved Companies

Now, this may be an ass-backwards way of looking at it, but NALFA-rated companies do tend to look pretty good.  We have companies like:

• Columbia
• Pergo
• Quick-Step
• Shaw

And on and on.  So, at least from that angle, the better laminate flooring manufacturers are gravitating towards NALFA.  Social proof in action?  I suppose so, but I believe it.

After all, finishing wood floors is a messy, smelly process that often forces homeowners out of their houses for days at a time…so why make things harder by using icky,  hard-to-use oil-based or Swedish finishes?

Water based…sounds simple and pure, huh?

As with anything good, there is a downside.  But let’s look at both sides and let you decide.

Water Based Finishes – Good

• Easy clean-up due to the water base.  Cleans with water.
• Low smell.
• Simple application with a lambswool pad and stick–a tool that’s easy to obtain and cheap from most home improvement stores.
• A watery consistency–it glides on, rather than thickly gooping on like an oil finish or shellac.
• Penetrates into the wood well, due to its water base and thin consistency.
• And the best…water-based floor finishes are really quite idiot-proof.  It’s easy to take a half-assed approach and still end up with a great looking floor.

Water-based floor finishes are fairly “half-assed-proof.”  Even if you screw it up, it’s hard to screw it up.

Water Based Finishes – Bad

I hate using the word “bad,” so can we say “not so good”?  With water based floor finishes there is nothing truly horrific.  More than anything, these finishes lack the “oomph” factor that some of the other finishes have.

• So watery that you can hardly believe it’s doing anything for your floor.  Consequently, you tend to over-apply it.
• Its milky white color is hard to discern on the floor.  You don’t quite know where you’ve applied it, so again, you tend to over-apply it.
• As with any type of thin or water-based finish, it raises the grain of the wood.
• If you’re looking for a real dramatic color change (without using stains), you won’t get it with the water based finish.  Light tone only here.
• Less protection than with poly-based finishes, due to fewer solids (and more water!) in the mix.

In other words, shellac is a pain in the ass and I have no idea why anyone would considered using shellac as a floor finish.

Since the days of yore, when bugs were crushed up to make shellac, the paint and finishes industry has developed far better floor finishes than shellac.  So, why not use them instead?  But first let’s deal with shellac.

The Mush Factor

Shellac is a resin that comes from the female lac bug in S.E. Asia–the same resin that glazes the candy Skittles.

Shellac is alcohol-based, and even though this means it dries rapidly, this still complicates matters because dilution is a tricky process.  Overly thick shellac applied to the flooring can form a shell-like surface that traps the alcohol base below.  This gives the shellac an outwardly “dry” feeling, when in reality it’s a mushy mess below.  Put your finger on it, step on it, or God forbid, set a paint or shellac can on it, and you have an indentation that lasts forever.

So, you’ll need to dilute your shellac; but unless you’re a pro at working with shellac, this is difficult to calibrate.

More Shellac Needed

Also, shellac is not a one-coat-does-all type of floor finish.  After that first coat, you’ve got to basically roughen it up again with fine-grit sandpaper in the 300’s range.  Then, wipe off the sanded shellac dust with tack cloth.  Then reapply the shellac finish.

Are you done yet?  No way.  Do it all over again.

Three coats of shellac is the minimum.  After that, you’ve got waxing to contend with, buffing, another waxing, and buffing again.

Shellac floor finish should be reserved for historic houses that demand this type of accuracy–not the average residential home.

Keep in mind that the close-grained hardwoods like maple and walnut will accept less stain and at a slower rate than an open-grain softwood like pine.

One way to improve stain penetration quantity and rate is to thin out the stain.

Test the Stain

Start by locating some of those scrap pieces of wood flooring that you saved from the installation.  You did save these pieces, didn’t you?  Practice-stain these wood pieces.  You’re doing two things here.  First, you’re trying to figure out if this is the stain you really want.  Second, you’re getting a feel for applying the stain.

Plan Your Staining

Take a good look at your floor.  You will never want to step on a stained area of the floor.  While this might seem obvious, it really isn’t.  Because floor stain sinks into the wood grain fairly rapidly, it feels dry to the touch almost immediately.  The problem is, it’s not really dry.  Best solution:  just never step on stained parts at all.

So, you will want to plan your staining out so this doesn’t happen.  Think of it like using one of those old electric mowers with a cord on it.  You never want to run over the cord, right?

Clean the Floor

Then clean down the flooring with tack cloth.  It is vitally important to get that wood floor spick and span.  Tack cloth should be your last method of cleaning.  Before this, you already used a broom, Shop-Vac…and Shop-Vac again…and maybe even a very mildly damp dust mop.

“Experts” will disagree about using a damp mop, saying that it raises the grain of the wood.  My take:  if the mop is “dryly damp” and the room rapidly dries, it’s fine to do this.

Mix the Flooring Stain

Stains need to be mixed.  If the stain happened to get shaken up, you’ll want it to settle for awhile because the thin consistency of stain can give you a frothy mixture.

Apply the Stain

Face it, there is no easy way to apply floor stain.  Get down on your knees and wipe on the stain with one of the huge number of clean, dry cotton rags you bought.  Or use a wide brush.

Wipe Off the Stain

The stain is on.  Now it’s got to come off?  That’s right.  It does help to have two people on this job, because one person can be the “stainer” and the other the “wiper.”  After the stain is first applied, you need to let it set for a few minutes before wiping off.  Make sure you are consistent about the time you allow, or some areas will get darker than others.  Also, as you go from row to row, make sure that you minimize the overlap between rows.  Wide overlap will leave dark stained lines.