Adventures in DIY Flooring - Cutting the Rug VII

I took a bit of a breather before tackling the last room - like several months, but before that there was this one last little bit to share: the "transition pieces."

I'm used two kinds; a T-mold and a stair nose. The T-mold was installed in October and is in the door ways and was not a requirement of the material... COOL FACT: this VPL can cover floors up to 300 feet long without requiring transition pieces. NOT-COOL TARA: I just couldn't empty the entire upstairs all at once and/or do all the math with the separate rooms and the not-perfectly-square rooms to manage to do it all without breaks. I'd rather that we didn't have to have the transitions in the doorways, but...

Two of the three that are completed so far. Visually, it's really subtle where it follows the same direction as the planks and it's not egregiously noticeable where it crosses the planks. Their overall profile is shallower than many of these kinds of transition pieces for other types of flooring.

The stair nose is tricky, because of the self-leveling underlayment and issues with the way the top stair riser was... let's call it "slightly janky," and the way the original underlayment was... let's say "slightly janky."

So I got this far (see below) and then it has stayed that way for... months. Not twelve months, but quite a few. In fact it is that way now, because there is always something less scary to work on. You see, I still need to build up that edge. I didn't realize I'd need to make up for the self-leveling underlayment, etc. D'oh!

I know these little threshold bits are boring. I also know that it was a bit nerve racking to install because a not-quite-eight-foot-length of each of these things were kind of spendy and I didn't want to mess them up. So, I had to share my success! And also share my super technical technique using super specialized special tools for holding the pieces in place while the adhesive dried.

Cast iron cookware: is there nothing it can't do?

Unforeseen additional steps:

I had to pull up and reinstall the planks in the hall and guestroom. Ugh and oof. While I did follow directions very closely from the very beginning when installing the LVP , I didn't quite get it right. There were some joins that I didn't notice hadn't quite clicked together until I was "done" which I thought felt was noticeable underfoot and looked so, too. I assumed this would also effect the longevity of the floor. Because I was very careful when pulling the planks up and stacked them in order course-by-course, I was able to reuse the same pieces with just just a few exceptions. It went A LOT faster since pretty much all the cutting was already done. Sure, it was a drag to have to empty the rooms of furniture, clear the closet floor, and pull up all the base mouldings, but I think it was worth it and I'm glad I (re)did it. I'm also glad I noticed before I started the master suite and bathroom so I could get it right from there and I'm really glad it's over.

Yeah, yeah. They're called "cups," but they're a lot more like a coaster as far as I'm concerned, so that's what I'm going to call them.

When I was pulling up the planks in the guest room I noticed that the bed feet had dented the surface. As per manufacturer instructions, I had added felt feet, but that only protected the surface from scratch-type wear, not dents. So, I picked up coasters for the bed feet. These are the kind made for carpet - they have a felt-like/fabric surface against the floor. The LVP manufacturer also recommends against rubber backed rugs and rubber rug pads, so I have to assume the rubber-bottomed coasters meant for hard surface flooring would not be recommended either. Hopefully, by avoiding running and throwing ourselves onto the guest bed we can keep it from sliding around too much! The master bed frame already has broad feet to distribute the weight better - and 6 of them at that.