This by far has been my favorite project to date! I cannot tell you how badly I’ve wanted ditch the nasty sheet vinyl that was in my entry room before.
Here is what it looked like before we put the new flooring down.
The first thing we did was remove the shoe molding that was along the bottom of the baseboards. Not to gross anyone out, but here is what it looked after we did that.
Just goes to show how terribly disgusting the floor was, and how badly it NEEDED TO GO!
The next step was to start laying the flooring. The SMARTCORE Locking Luxury Commercial/Residential Vinyl Plank Flooring by Natural Floors that we got at Lowe’s required almost no prep… or so I thought 
. We didn’t have to lay any subflooring like we would have had to if we had chosen laminate or hardwood floors, so we installed it straight over the old nasty flooring that was there before. We didn’t have to let the flooring sit to acclimate to the room’s temperature either, so that was a another bonus.
The flooring is also 100% waterproof and extremely durable, which are two of the main reasons why we chose this over laminate or hardwood.
The only issue we had with installing the vinyl over the current floor was that there wasn’t a gap beneath the baseboards for the vinyl planks to smoothly rest under so we had to make cuts to have it fit. Looking back we would have just removed the old flooring to make the process much easier. P.S. do you like how my mom thought she could fix the gaps by putting scrap pieces in there
… Don’t worry we realize that’s not an actual fix!
Now we not only have to install quarter round, but also have to get plinth blocks to fix the bad cuts around the door frames. 
at least now we know for when we install the new floors throughout the rest of the house.
Besides my lack of patience, and decision to not remove the original vinyl flooring, the click and lock plank system was super easy to install!
Cutting the pieces was super easy too! I had read that using a blow dryer to heat the plank where I wanted it cut and then using a exacto knife would do the trick and it worked really well which meant no saw necessary!
#vinyl #vinylflooring #vinylfloor #plankflooring #woodlook #flooring #diy #homeimprovement #diyhome #diyhomedecor #smartcorevinylfloors #lowes #loweshomeimprovementWe had also been debating whether or not to install the vinyl planks on the stairs too, or just to stain them. Eventually, we realized that it would be better to just put the flooring on the stairs too. This would end up saving us a lot of time and stress. I kind of hate when the floors and stairs are two different colors so rather than me try to figure out what color stain matches exactly, we could get a perfect match by just using the same material. The good thing was that there was nosing available in the same color vinyl, which would make installing the vinyl on the stairs super easy! I’ll keep you posted on the stair progress as we get that completed!
I will add more photos when I reveal the completed Entry Room Makeover!
To Be Continued….
MORE ENTRY ROOM 2017 POSTS:
Entry Room Makeover Plans 2017
Staining the Entry Room Stairs Part 1: My Exhausting Struggle to Find the Perfect