Don't Lay Your First Few Rows of LVP Until You Watch This

In Raleigh? Schedule a free in-home consultation: 👉 https://atlasflooringdesign.com/contact ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Most people installing vinyl plank flooring grab a box, start in a corner, and just go. Then halfway through the room they realize their last board is going to land as a two inch sliver at a doorway, and there is no fixing it without pulling the whole floor back up. The first few rows decide everything. Which direction the floor runs. Where every plank lands. Whether the pattern looks natural or looks like a staircase. In this video I show you exactly how I set up the first few rows on a real job. First, figuring out which way to run the planks. You go with the longest line in the house or the length of the hallway so the floor flows room to room instead of changing direction at every doorway. Then the part almost nobody does. Before laying a single plank, I work out the multiples of my plank width and measure off the wall in every room to see where the boards are going to land. If a plank lands in the middle of a doorway, great. If it lands as a sliver, I cut the first row down until it does not. Then the starting cuts. I always make four. A full board, a half, a three quarter, and a quarter. That is what keeps the pattern random instead of that staircase look you see all over the internet, which is fast to install and looks terrible when it is done. I also cover tongue direction, which is the thing that makes the difference between an install that clicks together easily and one that fights you all day. You want the small joint locking into the big one. Last, spacers. Corners first, then every joint. And what to do when the wall is bowed and your quarter inch gap starts closing up on you. This same setup works for laminate flooring, engineered wood, or any click-lock floor. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✔️ Which direction to run your planks and where to start ✔️ How to check where your last plank will land before you lay the first one ✔️ The four starting cuts that keep your pattern random ✔️ Why the staircase pattern makes your floor look cheap ✔️ Which way the tongue should face so the planks lock easily ✔️ How to set spacers and handle a bowed wall