Sheet vinyl vs. tile ??

[Ivan Vegvary]

Small basement bathroom (5' x 8') on concrete slab, new construction.

Sheet vinyl = no seams, harder to install (for me), more expensive (have to buy the full 12 foot width.

Tile = easy install, but seams. After many years will these edges start to curl up, etc.

Which is best

Thanks,

Ivan Vegvary

[Ralph Mowery]

Sometimes you can find some end of the roll pices that are much cheaper than buying just some off the roll. A while back I needed about as much as you do. It was about $ 300 for that, but I found some end of roll pieces that was less than $ 100 for enough to do the job.

[TomR]

Home Depot and Lowes sell 6' x 9' sheet vinyl in case that helps. But then you have the install issue. It is hard to get the cuts right. If it is new construction, and you can do the floor before putting in the fixtures and door, that can make it a lot easier.

Or, you could do vinyl tiles as you suggested. I don't think it will be any particular problem with curling etc.

Or, even better, since it is a concrete floor and a basement bathroom, would be to do ceramic tile. You would have to know how to do that work, cut the tiles, etc., but I think that would be the best option. If you are a little adventurous, you could learn how to do it on

etc. It would probably pay to have someone else do the installation if you aren't up to trying it yourself.

Good luck.

[devnull]

TrafficMaster Allure is the easiest flooring I've ever installed... and since it's not glued down, it will be an easy floor to replace.

[Ralph Mowery]

One easy way to make sure you get the cuts right on a small area is to use some paper. You can get a roll that is made to be a painters drop cloth. tape 2 to 3 pieces of it together to get what you need to cover the floor. Cut the paper to fit the room and then use it as a template to cut the vinyl.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Ceramic tile. Will outlast you and done right, will be trouble free, easy to clean.

[NamPhong]

Another thing to keep in mind with sheet vinyl is trapping moisture coming thru the concrete and allowing mold/mildew to grow under vinyl. Just sayin' and another thing to throw into the mental gymnastics.

[recyclebinned]

e to buy the full 12 foot width.

t to curl up, etc.

If you don?t want to install ceramic tile then go with sheet vinyl but I recommend that you:

1. Take out the toilet first.
2. Get some thick paper and cut out a pattern.
3. Use commercial vinyl which is five times thicker.
4. Caulk around the edges when you?re done.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Take a sheet of plastic a couple feet square. Tape it down to the floor and seal on all four sides. Check back in a few days to see if it is dry under the plastic.

[nestork]

Ivan:

I agree with recyclebin. If you take out the toilet, sheet vinyl is the easiest flooring to install except for painting the floor.

After you take the toilet out, remove all the old flooring down to the underlayment.

1. Plug the toilet drain pipe with a 7-11 Big Gulp cup to prevent sewer gasses coming up the toilet drain pipe and smelling up the bathroom.

1. Buy per roll wall paper at any paint or wallpaper store.

2. Make a pattern of your bathroom floor out of wallpaper. You will probably need to use a compass to scribe the contour of the tub onto a piece of wallpaper.

1. Buy a SIX FOOT WIDE piece of sheet vinyl or linoleum (like Congoleum or Marmoleum)

2. Put the wallpaper pattern on top of the sheet vinyl or linoleum and trace the pattern with a felt pen.

1. Cut out the pattern on the sheet vinyl or linoleum.

2. Loose lay the flooring in your bathroom and do any final trimming to improve the fit.

1. Put something really quite heavy, like a spouse, on one side of the flooring to hold it securely in place, and fold back the other half of the flooring.

2. Spread your flooring adhesive on the exposed side of the floor, wait the recommended time for it to get tacky, and then spread the flooring into the tacky adhesive. Press down with your hands or a rolling pin.

1. Remove the weight and do an encore performance on the other side of the flooring.

2. Reinstall your baseboards, and caulk along the tub and around the floor flange.

1. Reinstall the toilet.

[micky]

They sell pattern kits. With a grid printed on the paper. You trim that to fit the floor and then copy the shape to the vinyl. I forget what other parts the kit has, but I think the only thing you really need is the paper. Maybe that is sold separately, or maybe any big piece of paper, without a grid, would work.**

I have tile in what might be called the family room in the basement. After many 1/8" "floods" in the laundry room, the water finally reeached the family room once, and the tiles along the wall came unglued. about 12 of them. When they dried they weren't even flat anymore. So get extra tiles in case this happens.

OTOH, the toilet tank in the powder room off the front hall started pouring out water when I was away for two hours, and the vinyl tile glued to the plywood (or something) came unglued too, but I left it alone, and even walked on it carefully, and after it dried, it all seems stuck in place like it was before. Different pattern tile maybe different kind, and stuck to plywood, not cement.

**Save your sheet scraps too, just in case.

[croy]

What keeps it down?

[micky]

There may be two kinds of that. I had a paper painter's drop cloth, and the texture was rough and would have been difficult to write on, and there may have been two layers to the paper too, to make it absorbant. IIRC, the top layer didn't rest directly on the bottom layer so writing on it would have been doubly hard, would have been like rolling out a pie crust.

[micky]

And it will keep out the Communists, too.

[Ralph Mowery]

The one I was thinking of comes on a roll about 3 feet wide. YOu may have totape 2 or 3 pieces together to get it as wide as the room. It is similar to the old paper bags. There is no real need to mark on it. You take it in the room and lay it on the floor and cut the paper to match the room. It should be very easy to do if there is nothing in the room.. Then you take the pape and lay it over the vinyl and cut the vinyal to match. If careful , Christmas wrapping paper or anything like it could be used.

[micky]

You did say roll. I think mine was folded, like a sheet or blanket. I should have said that. They could decide to roll my kind, so the OP should look closely or poke open a hole in the wrapper and check.

[bob haller]

With a brand new home I would wait perhaps a year before installing any sort of floor covering to make certain the basement has no water problems.....

[Hot-Text]

Ceramic Tile is $3.50 and the only way to go on a concrete slab in a basement

As for vinyl Sheet or Tile these edges will start to curl up in no time at all

Your Truly Hot-Text

[micky]

You way overstate the situation. I don't have a cement slab, but I have a cement floor in the basement. Same thing as a slab from the pov of floor covering, right?

The vinyl tile in the den/club-room is 34 years old and in perfect condition except for the ones along the edge near the laundry room, which got wet** *** When they were 24 years old, they were in perfect condition too.

**And two tiles at the base of the stairs which eventually got damaged when I threw hard heavy things down the stairs and hit the tiles. ***If you had said tile will get wet in a bathroom, I wouldnt' have argued with you, but you say it's bad for the whole basement.

For vinyl sheet, one can either use quarter round to keep the edges from curling up, or use adhesive near the edges, or conceivably for all I know, nothing is necesssary.

[krw]

For a bathroom? No question; tile, ceramic style. It's not hard to install (it's a lot of work but it's not difficult). It's the *only* flooring for a bathroom.