Flooring Installation & Care Vinyl Flooring You probably remember what your vinyl floor looked like after installation – it was spotless, vibrant and all-around beautiful. However, after years of foot traffic, dropping objects and spilling drinks, your vinyl flooring may have lost some of their luster. Fortunately, it’s not gone for good. With a little elbow grease and these tips, you can repair and restore your vinyl floors: Vinyl tile flooring: Vinyl tiles come in smaller squares that are often easy to replace. If one of your tiles is discolored or scraped, all you have to do is remove it and replace it with another matching tile. Use a putty knife to dig into the seam. Then, tap its back end with a hammer to help the tool shimmy under the tile. Carefully lift the tile, using the knife to scrape areas where it’s stuck. Once the tile is gone, remove the glue with a floor stripper. Apply the new tile.From stains to dents to lifted seams, vinyl flooring can sustain some damage over time.
Luckily, it’s all rather simple to fix. The techniques you can employ to administer repairs depend on what the damage is and the kind of vinyl flooring you have. Patching: Sheet vinyl is a little more difficult to repair than tiles, which are smaller. Sheets have a bigger surface area, so simply replacing them isn’t always an option. Instead, you can use the patching method. First, identify the damaged area and box it in with tape. Then, find a piece of vinyl not attached to your floor (leftovers from your installation) and look for a section that matches perfectly to the damaged area. Cut a square out of the floor and the replacement. Adhere the replacement in the hole you cut out. Make sure the patterns match up perfectly, or you’ll notice the patch. Additionally, use a very sharp knife and straightedge to do all the cutting. When the finish on your vinyl flooring no longer shines, it’s time to give it a facelift. This is an easy fix, as you only have to apply new finish to your floors.
Here are a few ways to revitalize your vinyl: Refinish: If your vinyl floors have a finish on top, you can bring its shine back to life with a suitable finishing product. Floors with five or more layers of finish need to be stripped. Use a stripping solution made for vinyl floors, following the instructions verbatim. Most products will have you mop with the stripper and let the floor dry. Then you’ll scrub the vinyl with a stripping pad, apply stripper again and rinse. After that, vacuum your floors with a wet vac, then a dry vac. Mop the new finish on your floors and let the product dry. Buff the floors between each coat. Floor shiner: Most newer, luxury vinyl floors won’t require a drastic facelift, like refinishing. Instead, you can purchase floor products meant to deep clean and restore the surface. If your floors lack shine, you might need to adjust your maintenance habits. Stick to a pH-neutral cleaner, as alkaline solutions strip vinyl of its wax finish. Proper cleaners should help floors retain their glossy finish.
Be very careful not to touch the floor with the iron directly, as the vinyl may melt. When you lift up the iron, quickly stretch the vinyl until it meets over the split and make sure it cools like that. Once cool, use a flat-bladed knife to lift one side if the split, squirt a little superglue into the aperture, and quickly glue the vinyl down and together wiping any excess glue away carefully. Within 10 minutes this should be good enough to walk on, but I wouldn’t wash it for 24 hours. NB: If there is vinyl missing from the split, then a small shaving from a hidden area can be used as a patch and glued into place. The skill here is matching the sliver and flattening it completely into the gap but it is possible with patience. Vinyl Floor TearGenerally larger than a cut but should be treated in much the same way as a split. You can peel back the vinyl in the tear, clean both surfaces and dry thoroughly. Use the iron trick to flatten the vinyl out, make sure the edges meet and stick it down and together as before.
Fixing a Hole in Your Vinyl This works best with vinyl that is made to look like tiles, but it possible with other designs. It requires spare vinyl being available, either the off-cuts or somewhere under a kitchen unit for example, where it will not show if you take a square. First clean the area of the damage, as before. Then carefully cut out the square where the damage is (or if the pattern is not square, designate part of the pattern to be removed and replaced). Cut the same sized and coloured square from the spare vinyl, try to be as exact as possible but vinyl is quite a forgiving material and will flex if the gap and patch are a milimetre or so out. Glue the patch into the hole being very careful that the edges are well glued down and not proud of the hole. Vinyl Floor Bumps and BulgesThis is the easiest problem to fix – no matter how bad it looks, be it from furniture or kitchen appliances. Carefully using a hot iron over a tea-towel on the bulge will restore the vinyl to almost as new.