trafficmaster Archives - WNY Handyman

Allure Floor Installation and Review

Well, our Trafficmaster Allure floor installation is complete. If you aren’t familiar with this plank vinyl flooring product you can find it at Home Depot. The product is a fantastic alternative to a peel and stick vinyl tile. At the end of the installation, the product acts as a sheet vinyl would rather than free floating pieces that will gap and slide over time. Any movement should be covered by your final molding piece.

We wrote our initial review of the product here: http://www.wnyhandyman.com/trafficmaster-allure-plank-vinyl-floor-review/

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There are a number of videos regarding the installation of the TrafficMaster Allure product. Here are a couple that we found useful prior to installation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILuez7u7Mvw (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khXeJ0E8-Do (part 2)

Installation of Allure Trafficmaster Plank Vinyl from HomeDepot.com (PDF file)
http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/72/72845250-3948-4c77-824f-50f17da70f63.pdf

Summary of Allure Trafficmaster Plank Vinyl review:

Pros:

Price
At less than $2 per square foot, this is a good value for the money. In fact, you can run over to Ebay and pick up a Home Depot or Lowe’s coupon to save an extra 10%!
Ease of install
No special tools are needed. Similar install to a peel and stick tile without the slippage and separation. Cuts with a razor knife and detailed cuts can be made with shears. Since this is a floating installation, you don’t adhere to the sub floor making it a much cleaner DIY floor.
Durability
The product has a thickness to it that won’t allow it to show many imperfections through. With many vinyl flooring products every crack and void in your subfloor will show through. The vinyl planks are about 2x the thickness of an inexpensive sheet vinyl product. This will help with durability and smoothness of surface

Cons:

Errors aren’t simple to correct
If you make a mistake when applying this product, you are not going to be able to pull a single piece out with ease. The adhesion achieved when placing the pieces is nearly impossible to undue. If you make a mistake, you might have to backtrack quite a bit.
Instructions don’t fully cover the detailed steps
As with other laminate installations undercuts should be made at door jambs and molding should cover your outer gap for the best result. This isn’t covered in the basic instructions that come with the product. To achieve a professional looking result, this should be done. If you don’t have one, consider a Factory-Reconditioned Dremel Multi-Max.

I would absolutely use this product again or recommend it to any DIY’er. Easy and a solid looking end result.

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TrafficMaster Allure Plank Vinyl Floor Review

We decided to us a plank vinyl flooring product for the entry at a fixer project. The product is TrafficMaster Allure and is available at Home Depot. This is a floating vinyl installation where the vinyl planks adhere to one another. In theory, this is a better method than your traditional 12×12 vinyl tile installation. With the plank vinyl floor, your product moves as a single unit (similar to a sheet) rather than experiencing the individual movement that an inexpensive self-stick tile will see.

For a wet area, the plank vinyl product from TrafficMaster seems ideally suited. The method that they use for the adhesion is a lapped tongue that is substantial enough (about 1″) so that the adhesion should provide a nice water barrier / seal. Overall, we are very happy with the product. It met our needs for this project and was a nice alternative to a sheet product.

As many of you probably know, making flooring choices is always a challenge. There are a number of factors that will impact your decision.

Cost
Time
Design

Put the factors in your own order, but they are almost always part of the equation. Our small entry area (70 square feet) has a rather tight door swing. Because of this, we are unable to do a traditional tile installation. We had to use a vinyl product due to the thickness (or lack of). Due to a rather complex shape, we wanted to avoid a sheet product and we also wanted to achieve a wood look. One other factor was that we wanted a fast install that virtually anyone could do. A product that can be put down by a handyman and not just a skilled flooring contractor was the right choice for this job.

We selected the TrafficMaster Allure, Hickory 6 in. x 36 in. Resilient Vinyl-Plank Flooring. The price was $1.79 per square foot which was a very fair price for the quality of the product. Time will tell with regard to the durability and adhesion quality of the glue used for the lapped tongue, but our initial impression of the project makes it a terrific choice for many applications.

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