Instruction: how to lay linoleum at home, laying rules, operating tips

How to lay linoleum at home

Linoleum is one of the most beautiful and durable flooring, which is also characterized by high practicality. This is an unusually warm, hygienic and very durable material. To maintain its operational characteristics, it is enough to simply try to prevent long-term contact of linoleum with chemicals, such as mineral oils, soda, alkali and acid. Such a floor covering is perfectly washed with ordinary warm water and soap, and it is very easy to return it to its former gloss by rubbing with mastic. Indisputable, as well as playing a significant role in the choice of base, the advantage is the ease of laying linoleum. Any person can do this work, and we, in turn, will try to facilitate this process and give some useful tips on how to lay linoleum.

 

Content

• Preparation for laying linoleum

• Determine the amount of material
• Free up space for work
• The path to success – preparing the foundation
• How to prepare material
• What is necessary for styling

How to lay linoleum – technology

Types of welding linoleum

Skirting Installation Rules

Furnishings, interior and new linoleum

 

Preparation for laying linoleum

Before laying linoleum, it is necessary to carry out a number of preparatory work. This stage cannot be avoided for any type of flooring. After all, the correct preparation for the flooring is the key to a wonderful appearance and long life of the floor.

Determine the amount of material

In order to determine exactly how much material is needed for covering, it is recommended that you first draw a floor plan of the room with the most accurate indication of the location of all doorways and pipes entering the floor. Further, in this drawing, it is necessary to affix all sizes:

• length and width of the room;
• area;
• distances to communication entrances to the room;
• the width of the doorways.

Now you can go to buy linoleum.

Tip: it’s better to buy linoleum in a specialized construction store, since there, mainly, consultants are specially trained people who can help with the selection of material and give qualified recommendations, as well as select the necessary fittings (joints, corners) and baseboards.

When choosing linoleum, special attention should be paid to the width of the coating, trying to choose it so as to avoid the formation of internal joints or reduce their number to a minimum. Some stores practice not only the selection of material according to the plan of the room, but also the correct cutting in size. You just have to bring it home and lay it right.

Tip: when buying linoleum, you should immediately purchase new skirting boards, best made of soft plastic (they are even more firmly attached to uneven walls) with a cable channel. Do not forget also about the expansion bolt shield nails for fastening and about thresholds.

Free up space for work

First, you should fully prepare the room in which the change of coverage is planned. In order to facilitate future work as much as possible, all furniture and interior items located on the floor should be taken out of the room. Linoleum is a very soft material, which is why dragging objects from an uncovered area onto a finished foundation is fraught with a number of difficulties:

• firstly, each time, rearranging furniture or other elements of the interior, it will be necessary to take care of special substrates to avoid linoleum punching;
• secondly, heavy objects when moving along the surface of a new coating will surely leave scuffs or scratches, and you run the risk of seeing a sloppy rubbed floor immediately after finishing work.

The path to success – preparing the foundation

Now pay attention to the plane of the base. As with any other floor covering, it should be as even as possible, even minimal irregularities cannot be left on it. Linoleum is a very soft material, its surface very quickly takes on the shape of the floor under it, so even a very small pebble can lead to large damage to the coating located above it.

In principle, linoleum can be laid on any foundation. The main condition is the absolute evenness of the surface. Special insulated types of this material allow not to use thermal insulation even before laying linoleum on concrete. But the waterproofing layer is still worth laying. Usually, before laying linoleum on a concrete floor, an ordinary ruberoid is spread on its surface.

Many are interested in the question, is it possible to lay linoleum on linoleum? Of course, you can, if he is not too old. The new floor will benefit from this. It will be much softer and warmer than the old. In houses made of reinforced concrete structures, one may encounter the following problem: the plates that serve as the basis of the floor are not always primed. In this case, building dust will break through the coating. This can be avoided by self-priming the entire surface. If you decide not to remove the old linoleum, then you can limit yourself to priming the edges.

To avoid the appearance of a relief pattern of a board surface, before laying linoleum on a wooden floor, it should be covered with hardboard or plywood. In this case, it should also be taken into account that the boards under the linoleum can begin to shine with excessive moisture, therefore, during the entire period of operation, you must carefully ensure that no liquid gets under the flooring.

How to prepare material

Having delivered the purchased material to the destination, the rolls must be deployed in the room where it is planned to lay linoleum. Here he must be in a straightened state for at least two days. This will allow him to return to his form and take on real dimensions. If the coating consists of several parts, then all of them should be laid out in their places.

Tip: linoleum should only be transported in rolls. If it is folded in a rectangle several times, then from the folds formed as a result of this action, it will be impossible to get rid of.

What is necessary for styling

Before laying linoleum, you need to prepare everything you need. We may need:

• glue;
• roller and brush for primer;
• electric jigsaw;
• screwdriver;
• hammer drill;
• double-sided tape or cold welding;
• knife for cutting linoleum;
• two spatulas for applying glue (one is ordinary and the other with teeth).

How to lay linoleum – technology

1. Before you lay linoleum and after it is completely laid down, it must be finally leveled on the surface of the floor and cut off all unnecessary. A centimeter gap, the so-called expansion joint, should be left between the wall and the floor. This will avoid the appearance of waves on the finished base, and the gap can be easily hidden under the baseboard.
2. Now roll one edge of the material into a roll.
3. Thinking about how to properly lay linoleum, not everyone will guess that for better fixation, the coating can be glued to the base. We recommend doing just that. On the surface of the floor, from which linoleum has just been removed, apply a layer of glue with a notched trowel.
4. We lay the rolled up part of the material and smooth it carefully.
5. At the joints, we cut the coating as follows: we place a sheet of plywood under the linoleum, overlap the second piece on top and, using a ruler and knife, cut through both layers of material. If the linoleum is too thick, then it is enough to cut through at least one layer, leaving scratches on the second that serve as a mark for trimming.

Types of welding linoleum

Pieces of linoleum can be joined together using cold and hot weldings. Hot welding of seams requires the use of a special tool, so it is used only for laying coatings in commercial institutions, shops, offices, etc..

In living quarters, good joint joining can be achieved by cold welding. This is a special adhesive that dissolves the edges of linoleum and forms a homogeneous structure with a floor covering when dried..

Let’s consider in more detail how to lay linoleum correctly using the cold welding method:

1. We connect two pieces of linoleum.
2. We glue the joint with tape. This will prevent the adhesive from entering other areas of the coating..
3. Cut the tape at the junction.
4. Apply glue with a thickness of at least 4 mm.
5. After 10 minutes, completely remove the tape along with excess glue.

Tip: if glue gets on linoleum, do not rush to immediately wipe it. After complete drying, this glue is remarkably removed from the surface with an ordinary knife.

Skirting Installation Rules

If we talk about how to lay linoleum yourself, then it is worth giving some tips on installing skirting boards. After all, you will not, having completed most of the work, call specialists to carry out this stage. so,

1. We take out from all the plinths the trims covering the cable channel.
2. We lay out the skirting boards along the walls and cut them to size.
3. We press the baseboard simultaneously to the floor and the wall and in the recess under the bar we drill a through hole (both in the baseboard and in the wall).
4. We attach the baseboard with the dowel screw.
5. We continue these manipulations along the entire length of the plinth.

Tip: thick cables should be laid in the cable channel at the same time as installation. Otherwise, this will be very problematic..

Furnishings, interior and new linoleum

Speaking about how to lay linoleum, it is impossible not to mention the return of furniture to the room. It is at this stage that most often a new coating gets scratches, scuffs and even torn holes. Consider how to avoid this:

1. First of all, you need to check the legs of all the furniture that you plan to place in the room. They should be padded with soft substrates, which can be used as plastic or suede..
2. When bringing upholstered furniture, its items are often placed on their side so that they can easily enter the doorway. Quite often, small sticking cloves are found in the side walls of armchairs or sofas. If such furniture is dragged along the linoleum, then the carnation, stuck in a soft floor covering, can not only scratch it, but also tear off a large piece.
3. When dragging heavy dimensional objects, soft and durable material (for example, an old rug or blanket) must be placed under them. Now, if you pull the edges of the fabric, you can easily deliver the closet or wardrobe directly to the destination.
4. The most dangerous pieces of furniture are sliding chairs and sofas. As a rule, rollers designed to roll the structure on the floor are not checked, and it is their malfunction that causes the damaged floor covering after the furniture is installed in the room.

So we noted all the main stages of the process and are sure that you are no longer interested in the question of how much it costs to lay linoleum.