One day at the office, I felt the flooring squish a bit under my feet and upon closer inspection, some moisture was coming up between the planks. We had floating laminate planks, so an air conditioning leak led to us needing to completely replace the flooring in this hallway.
Luckily, when you are a flooring store, you’ve got the best people at your disposal to get the job done!
One of our expert installers and his team were able to get here the same day and tear out the damaged planks. Here, he is using a circular saw to cut where we want the transition to be.
Once the planks were removed, we could see the full extent of the leak.
This was an unusual set of circumstances since our air conditioning leaked under the planks but on top of the vapor barrier. It didn’t come from the slab, but from the wall.
The vast majority of our hard surface flooring selections are water-resistant, but it is important to remember that this applies to moisture on top of the planks, not underneath.
When moisture comes from below the planks, even if the leak is caught early, damage and eventually mold are likely to occur, so unfortunately this requires a full replacement of the floor.
With tile, this would not be an issue, since it is installed right onto the slab. Since this area is right outside of the restroom and by the A/C vent, we decided to go with tile. Ron and Vanessa got right to work finding a great selection. Vanessa has a keen eye for design, so she already had a vision for the space.
Within a couple of hours, the tear out was complete!
After the slab was completely clean, our installer began leveling the surface using mud.
After this dried, he started laying crack isolation fabric and covering it with an anti-fracture. Like any older building, we have cracks in the foundation, so it is important to reinforce those before the installation begins.
The floor then had to dry for 24 hours.
For our tile we chose a glazed porcelain hexagon tile from BPI’s Atlas Concorde. The collection is called Boho and we liked how the colors were minimalist but still dynamic and would lend to an eye-catching pattern, especially with these starburst-patterned tiles.
The colors we went with were Bone, Fog and Smoke.
In order to plan out the tile pattern, our installers first talk with the client about the vision for the project. Randomization can be a lot trickier than it looks and it actually takes a lot of planning and effort to make a flooring pattern look unplanned and randomized.
