Carpet to LVP: What the Job Involves From Tear-Out to Trim

Replacing carpet with luxury vinyl plank is the most common flooring job in Polk County. What comes up, what the slab needs and where the surprises are.

Pulling carpet and laying luxury vinyl plank is the single most requested flooring job we do. Carpet in a Florida home holds humidity, pet odor and sand, and it looks tired within a few years. LVP is waterproof, handles the humidity, cleans with a mop and looks like wood. The job is straightforward when it is planned properly, and there are a few places it goes wrong when it is not.

Tear-out

The carpet and pad come up first. Tack strips along every wall are pried off the slab, which leaves a line of nail holes and often a strip of old adhesive or mastic from a floor that was there before the carpet. In older Lakeland and Bartow homes we sometimes find original terrazzo or tile under the carpet, and occasionally old vinyl that should not be sanded. Knowing what is under the carpet before the day of the job avoids surprises.

The slab has to be flat and dry

LVP is thin and follows whatever is under it. Manufacturers typically require the floor to be flat within a small tolerance over a ten-foot span, and Florida slabs rarely are. High spots get ground, low spots get filled with a self-leveling compound, and the tack strip holes and old adhesive are addressed. Skipping this is why click-together floors develop bouncy spots and open joints. Our post on leveling a subfloor explains what that entails.

Moisture is the other slab issue. Most LVP is waterproof from the top, but moisture rising through a slab can still cause problems with some adhesives and underlayments, and many Central Florida slabs have no vapor barrier. A moisture test and a vapor-retarding underlayment where needed is cheap insurance.

Choosing the plank

Wear layer thickness, in mils, is the number that matters for durability. Thicker is better for homes with dogs, kids and sand. A rigid core plank, often labeled SPC, resists dents and stays flat on a slightly imperfect slab better than a flexible plank. Attached underlayment pads sound and feel better underfoot. Color and plank width are taste, but a longer, wider plank reads as more expensive and hides seams better in a large room. Our comparison of LVP and tile covers when tile is the better choice.

Stairs, bathrooms and wet rooms

LVP on stairs uses matching stair nosing and each tread is glued rather than floated, which is slower and priced separately. In bathrooms and laundry rooms, a waterproof plank is fine on the floor, but the perimeter still needs to be sealed so a washer overflow does not travel under the floor. Around a toilet the flange height sometimes needs adjustment when the floor rises. These are details a crew that installs LVP every week handles automatically and a first-time installer tends to find out about later.

Layout and direction

Plank runs the long direction of the main room, or parallel to the main light source. In an open floor plan the same direction carries through every room for a continuous look. Floating floors need an expansion gap at every wall and, in large or L-shaped spaces, a transition strip where the manufacturer specifies one. Where LVP meets tile in a bathroom or kitchen, the height difference is handled with the right transition profile; our post on flooring transitions shows what those look like when done well.

Baseboards and doors

Carpet tucks under baseboard. LVP does not, so there are two choices: pull the baseboards and reinstall them on top of the new floor, or leave them and add quarter-round or shoe molding to cover the expansion gap. Pulling and resetting looks cleaner and is the better job. Door jambs and casings are undercut so the plank slides beneath them. Doors themselves sometimes need trimming at the bottom if the new floor is thicker than the carpet was, and closet bifolds need their track height checked.

What it costs in the Lakeland area

LVP installation in Central Florida is priced per square foot for material and labor, with tear-out, disposal, slab prep, transitions and baseboard work as line items. Slab leveling is the variable that most changes a quote. A free estimate after we see the slab gives you a firm number, and the flooring cost guide gives general ranges.

Inventive Home Improvement installs LVP and other flooring across Lakeland, Haines City, Dundee and throughout Polk County. Call (863) 633-5499.

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