Returning guest will notice immediately that the old carpet is gone on the first floor. The carpet was needing replacement so instead of replacing carpet with carpet we elected to go with Luxury Vinyl Planking. We choose a Natural Color from Cali Bamboo. 

We ordered the flooring directly from Cali Bamboo. The flooring was shipped from California via rail and got stuck in Georgia for a week. It was then supposed to travel via Fed Ex trailer to Orlando and then to Lakeview Villa. We were told that they would not deliver it to the garage but would leave it at the curb. Ugh.

When the truck arrived, I asked the driver about why he couldn’t deliver the flooring into the garage, he had a lift on the truck and a pallet jack to move the 36 boxes of flooring, and he said they say that to prevent customers from having any expectations of delivery into the garage in case the driveway is not traversable. He said he could drop it in the garage via the pallet jack, no problem.

Oh, and case you haven’t figured it out yet, we installed the flooring ourselves. Well, Chuck installed it. Several things must be determined before installation. First one is the direction of the floor, where to start the flooring, are the rooms square, are the floors level and do you have to cut the first row to make sure the flooring planks are big enough on opposite walls. 

We spent 2 days prepping the floors by cleaning the old drywall mud and paint off the floors that was under the carpet. We also found a low spot on the floor, so we had to apply floor leveling and wait a day for that to dry.

We choose to pull all the base molding and number each piece on the back so we could easily return it to its proper location. We took the molding outside and painted it. We feel that not adding shoe molding makes for a cleaner look. One thing to note is if we had “professional” installers do this job they would have left the base molding as is and added shoe molding. 

You will see several matching area rugs in the living room and the master bedrooms. We ordered these and they were shipped in 2 days from rugs.com .

Since we were installing over a concrete slab, we had to lay plastic down before we laid the flooring down. This is because moisture can still permutate through the concrete. The installation of the flooring went quick after getting started. The cuts around door jambs and around corners slow you down. We also placed most of the furniture on 18” x 12” 1000 Lb. Capacity Hardwood Dollies that we picked up from Harbor Freight to move the furniture around easily. 

We glued the transition strips to the floor with a urethane adhesive and snapped the strips into the tracks. Next, we reattached the newly painted baseboards. After the flooring was complete, we laid down the area rugs and placed the furniture in its rightful place.

Check out this review at RV Lifestyle on best tool belts, we all need a good tool belt when doing our DIY projects around the house.