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DIY - Navy Maven - 01-11-2018
Just wondering if there are any DIY renovation aficionados on the forum?
I've just bought my first house and will be moving in probably around April and starting to plan a few renovations that need to be done.
Has anyone here ever installed their own timber laminate or vinyl plank flooring? If so, is it the kind of thing a reno novice can do? I have never done any reno style projects, but am conscious of my dwindling budget, so trying to prioritise what I should get a professional for and what I might be able to do myself.
Three biggest jobs are:
Painting - Interior only, but basically every room needs to be done
Carpet - To bedrooms (3) and lounge
Flooring - Kitchen, family room and hallways. Tossing up between timber laminate and vinyl planks
I definitely will have to get the carpets done professionally, so mainly it's going to be whether I do the painting myself, or do the flooring myself. So to anyone with some experience, which would be the easiest for someone with absolutely no experience in either?
Re: DIY - cookie2 - 01-11-2018
I've done quite a bit of house reno etc. in my time NM. From my experience the easiest job on your list would be painting out rooms but there a a few tricky points to it and I find it to be a very boring occupation.
If you are a novice then I would approach laying carpet cautiously - getting it flat and smooth needs a bit of experience and a knee kicker tool.
I've only done floor tiling, many moons ago, and the cutting for the tricky edges, corners and around door frames etc was the hardest part I find. You need to invest in the right tools.
Have a look on Youtube and you will find plenty of good instructional videos, Also the Bunnings site has a good range of these too.
Re: DIY - ElwoodBlues1 - 01-11-2018
Done my share , owner built a couple of extensions to homes and generally do most of the work myself.....Mrs Elwood though has put a stop to my major reno activities although she relents enough for me to help my children.
1. Timber Laminate flooring or Vinyl....yep been there done that... dont buy the real cheap thin boards, they dont lock together properly and the grooved edges will break when you tap them into place especially with a floor that aint too level. Use decent underlay too, dont be tempted to put the new boards straight over any other flooring and dont cheat by putting the boards flush against the skirting, leave the gaps for movement as suggested. My daughter has a new home and the installers decided to cheat because it saved them having to rip cut some boards and when the heat came last Xmas she woke up and the boards had all buckled and she had a mountain peak in her family room...
2. Carpet...forget the DIY, get it installed, you can feck up the laminate boards but if you cut the carpet wrong you are out of pocket big time.
Get a company who sell and install but have their own installers, not subbies....
3
ainting....go for it, buy the better brushes/rollers.......dont use the cheap $2 shop ones that shed fibres everywhere or you will be painting again, get decent edging brushes too and the proper masking tape that doesnt stick...4: Wall tiling.....too easy, tip...if you are a newbie then butter the tiles one at a time dont spread the adhesive everywhere and have to rush as it will dry out and its a bitch to get off and get level. Another tip, you can tile straight over other tiles in say a kitchen, it does work and come up ok if you prepare the other tiles right, dont be tempted to bash all the other tiles off in a pre 1980's home as you will probably find asbestos sheeting as the backing and you dont want that everywhere.
If you are doing a lot of tiles hire/buy an electric tile cutter, easy to use and saves heaps of time, one of my better investments.....
5. Floor Tiling ie Bathroom.....ok if its flat floor and no drain outlets ie open showers etc but if you have to angle towards drains then forget it, get a waterproofer to do it....
and check all your showers for leaks before hand, soft skirting boards, mould on the outside at the corners says leaks, get that fixed first...
Good luck....
Re: DIY - tonyo - 01-11-2018
(01-11-2018, 12:37 AM)Navy Maven link Wrote:Just wondering if there are any DIY renovation aficionados on the forum?
I've just bought my first house and will be moving in probably around April and starting to plan a few renovations that need to be done.
Has anyone here ever installed their own timber laminate or vinyl plank flooring? If so, is it the kind of thing a reno novice can do? I have never done any reno style projects, but am conscious of my dwindling budget, so trying to prioritise what I should get a professional for and what I might be able to do myself.
Three biggest jobs are:
Painting - Interior only, but basically every room needs to be done
Carpet - To bedrooms (3) and lounge
Flooring - Kitchen, family room and hallways. Tossing up between timber laminate and vinyl planks
I definitely will have to get the carpets done professionally, so mainly it's going to be whether I do the painting myself, or do the flooring myself. So to anyone with some experience, which would be the easiest for someone with absolutely no experience in either?
Re laminate flooring, whatever you buy, make sure it's at least 12mm thick. The 8mm stuff is like walking on cheap plywood. If you can find the dough, spend a little extra and get 14mm bamboo - best thing I ever did, much tougher and looks better. Also, 6ft boards look much better than the 4ft ones. If you are going to do it yourself, you need a good table saw and a multi-tool to cut out the door jambs (there will be lots of cutting....). If you are mad keen, you could remove the skirts and put the flooring underneath, but most people just use the pre-finished quad and leave a gap between flooring and skirts.
Do you really need carpets? Floorboards with rugs in appropriate spots can be a better result. But if you carpet, that is something for someone who knows what they are doing.
Painting - piece of cake. And if it doesn't look good the first time, you can always just go over it. Make sure you do the appropriate prep work. And do the painting work before you do any of the flooring! And, the difference between a $20 brush and a $5 brush is worth every cent.
Best of luck
Re: DIY - Navy Maven - 01-11-2018
(01-11-2018, 02:36 AM)tonyo link Wrote:Re laminate flooring, whatever you buy, make sure it's at least 12mm thick. The 8mm stuff is like walking on cheap plywood. If you can find the dough, spend a little extra and get 14mm bamboo - best thing I ever did, much tougher and looks better. Also, 6ft boards look much better than the 4ft ones. If you are going to do it yourself, you need a good table saw and a multi-tool to cut out the door jambs (there will be lots of cutting....). If you are mad keen, you could remove the skirts and put the flooring underneath, but most people just use the pre-finished quad and leave a gap between flooring and skirts.
Do you really need carpets? Floorboards with rugs in appropriate spots can be a better result. But if you carpet, that is something for someone who knows what they are doing.
Painting - piece of cake. And if it doesn't look good the first time, you can always just go over it. Make sure you do the appropriate prep work. And do the painting work before you do any of the flooring! And, the difference between a $20 brush and a $5 brush is worth every cent.
Best of luck
Thanks tonyo. I would prefer bamboo too, but it's a bit out of the budget now. Originally we were looking at bamboo and getting all 3 things done by professionals, but spent a bit more on furniture than we expected.
As for the carpet, completely agree, but my partner wants carpet in the bedrooms and lounge and I'm not willing to spend the next decade hearing her whinge about it (she'll inevitably find something to whinge about) haha.
Thanks again, will need to look into the costs for the tools needed as well
Re: DIY - DJC - 01-11-2018
Our new house required painting and new carpets and we got both done professionally.
The painting took two blokes 6 days (it's a big house) and I reckon that it would have taken me 3 times as long. I quite like painting but it just wasn't worth it because of the other demands on my time. If you decide to do the painting yourself, don't scrimp on paint, rollers and brushes; the best quality will produce the best result.
Carpet laying is best done by professionals but I don't have any experience with timber laminate or vinyl flooring. As Cookie suggests, do your research before deciding whether it's something you can take on yourself.
Re: DIY - Navy Maven - 01-11-2018
(01-11-2018, 02:23 AM)ElwoodBlues1 link Wrote:Done my share , owner built a couple of extensions to homes and generally do most of the work myself.....Mrs Elwood though has put a stop to my major reno activities although she relents enough for me to help my children.
1. Timber Laminate flooring or Vinyl....yep been there done that... dont buy the real cheap thin boards, they dont lock together properly and the grooved edges will break when you tap them into place especially with a floor that aint too level. Use decent underlay too, dont be tempted to put the new boards straight over any other flooring and dont cheat by putting the boards flush against the skirting, leave the gaps for movement as suggested. My daughter has a new home and the installers decided to cheat because it saved them having to rip cut some boards and when the heat came last Xmas she woke up and the boards had all buckled and she had a mountain peak in her family room...
2. Carpet...forget the DIY, get it installed, you can feck up the laminate boards but if you cut the carpet wrong you are out of pocket big time.
Get a company who sell and install but have their own installers, not subbies....
Good luck....
I wish my Dad was half as useful lol, he's the son of a builder but has none of the talent.
Yeah I definitely wouldn't attempt trying the carpet myself, but thankfully that appears to be the cheapest of the three anyway.
I'm keen to give the painting a go, one other option I thought of was to have a professional do the main living spaces and I'll do the bedrooms....at least that way if I stuff it up, it'll be in the areas that most people won't see.
That's good to know about the flooring. I wouldn't have even thought about the heat expansion.
Thanks heaps for the advice
Re: DIY - Thryleon - 01-11-2018
My advise is youtube everything you are going to attempt, and watch as many different videos showing techniques as possible.
Then factor in that these people will have had a lifetime of work experience and instruction behind what they do, and decide whether or not you can do it well enough.
The other alternative, is simply to wait and do the projects in dribs and drabs.
We used taxi boxes to store the entire interior of our home whilst we got our timber overlay flooring done.
We had saved and done the majority of those renovations after a few years, but I painted the house when we moved in, and having been in there 4 years and doing a major renovation, I re painted the house knowing that they start to look tired after about 8 years and could use a re coat.
There are more factors to consider. Even if you do a good job, what will take a pro 1 day will likely take you about 3 (or more) depending on skill level.
I would always paint, irrespective. Pros go that quickly that they tend to do as bad a job as an amateur who is trying really hard to get it right.
Re: DIY - Navy Maven - 01-11-2018
(01-11-2018, 01:28 AM)cookie2 link Wrote:I've done quite a bit of house reno etc. in my time NM. From my experience the easiest job on your list would be painting out rooms but there a a few tricky points to it and I find it to be a very boring occupation.
If you are a novice then I would approach laying carpet cautiously - getting it flat and smooth needs a bit of experience and a knee kicker tool.
I've only done floor tiling, many moons ago, and the cutting for the tricky edges, corners and around door frames etc was the hardest part I find. You need to invest in the right tools.
Have a look on Youtube and you will find plenty of good instructional videos, Also the Bunnings site has a good range of these too.
To be fair, that's one of the main reasons I've got that on the list of things I should pay other people to do. I'll be taking some time off work to set up the house, I don't know if I want 80% of that time to be used just painting. There's heaps of other stuff we'll be doing ourselves as it is.
I will check out some of the YouTube vids though and see if I think I'll be able to do the flooring.
Thanks heaps
Re: DIY - Navy Maven - 01-11-2018
(01-11-2018, 03:44 AM)Thryleon link Wrote:My advise is youtube everything you are going to attempt, and watch as many different videos showing techniques as possible.
Then factor in that these people will have had a lifetime of work experience and instruction behind what they do, and decide whether or not you can do it well enough.
The other alternative, is simply to wait and do the projects in dribs and drabs.
We used taxi boxes to store the entire interior of our home whilst we got our timber overlay flooring done.
We had saved and done the majority of those renovations after a few years, but I painted the house when we moved in, and having been in there 4 years and doing a major renovation, I re painted the house knowing that they start to look tired after about 8 years and could use a re coat.
There are more factors to consider. Even if you do a good job, what will take a pro 1 day will likely take you about 3 (or more) depending on skill level.
I would always paint, irrespective. Pros go that quickly that they tend to do as bad a job as an amateur who is trying really hard to get it right.
That's a good point. I'm hoping one of the benefits of moving to a smallish town though is the quality of the tradespeople. I've found in the past that you live and die by your reputation in a small community. My Mum was a hairdresser and drove a dentist out of town through her own word of mouth (in fairness the dentists negligence nearly killed me when I was 9). So whichever project I pay for, I'll definitely be asking for local recommendations.