A One Week Review of Our LifeProof Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring

It’s been a week since our LifeProof Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring (also known as LVP) was installed and we’ve had so many questions, so today we’re sharing our review and experience after 1 week!

Why Vinyl Planks?

When you hear the phrase “1950s basement” what’s something you might think of? Maybe water? Yep, and that would be true of our basement too. And while most of our basement was renovated and finished in 1970s wood paneling and carpet, it has been no stranger to water.

When Ohio had that huge rainstorm in 2018, our carpet was soaked and we spent hours cleaning it up. It was also an encouragement for us to update our space to get rid of that musty carpet!

You know, I love how carpet adds instant coziness to a room, especially a basement, but with a history of water, we didn’t want to take the risk of that happening again. So began our search for other options! Our good friends had just installed luxury vinyl planks in their basement and since they had such a good experience with it, we just went with it!

Y’all, after dealing with puddles of water in 400 square feet of carpet, the phrase “waterproof” sounds VERY attractive! And guess what? LifeProof Vinyl Plank Flooring from Home Depot is 100% waterproof!

Some other attractive features of LVP:

• The pad was included/attached, so it removed another step in installation.
• LifeProof LVP can be installed over most hard surfaces, like concrete, tile, vinyl, or wood.
• Tongue and groove installation means no additional chemicals and since it’s a “floating floor” there was no glue needed.
• It’s very durable so when kids play it’s more difficult to damage the flooring.

P.S. Speaking of water, to help prevent our newly updated finished area of our basement from getting water again, we got a sump pump installed. But, a huge win were these 6 foot water blocking sandbag snakes from Amazon! They are literally designed to block water, so we put two of them around our floor drain, close to our wall to protect and reroute water if it ever comes up! If you get water in your basement (or even somewhere outside your home), you’ve gotta check these out!

Ordering LifeProof LVP

When we were 90% sure, we scheduled someone from Home Depot to measure our space. There’s a fee for the measurement, which is deducted from your total if you end up purchasing flooring. Once they measured, someone called us with a cost / supply estimate. For us, the process of talking to them on the phone was really difficult so we went into our local store and talked with them in person. I’d highly recommend this! It’s so much better to see things in person, but also have a point-person to contact with questions.

The finished area of our basement is approximately 400 square feet. We also got an estimate for adding LVP to our stairs, but the cost was almost the same amount as the flooring for the rest of our basement (so stay tuned for our DIY Stair Update)! Also included on our order were transition strips for each of our doorways (that matched our LVPs), which transition the flooring to other types of flooring. We added 85 feet of primed baseboards to our order as well.

Once we were ready to place our order, we went into the store to finalize and pay for the materials, which were all custom orders. Our exact flooring is LifeProof Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring in Woodacres Oak. 10 days later, our materials were available to pick up at our local Home Depot! For an extra fee, you could hire them to deliver the materials to your home.

LVP Flooring Installation

I’ve heard this flooring is great and easy to work with if you wanted to tackle this project yourself! Since we have no experience with a table saw (and didn’t want to lose any fingers), we decided to hire a local contractor to remove our carpet and install our flooring and baseboards.

As I mentioned above, a perk of this flooring is that you can install it right over your existing floor. Our 1950s concrete foundation isn’t super smooth so there are areas where it dips, but the contractors said it wasn’t a problem and it’s looking really nice! The only place you can tell where it dips is if you look at a few areas by our baseboards, but we don’t really mind! It’s part of the character, right?

What’s Our One Week Review?

We love our new flooring! And watch out if you’re wearing socks! Haha. Mike was playing with my nephews and slipped with socks on (but he was okay, don’t worry 🙂 ). We are baffled by the difference flooring and baseboards have made in our space, along with all the other DIY updates we’ve made! Can you believe that’s vinyl?!

Aesthetically, something you want to talk with your contractor about is the “pattern” of the floor. Since LVP is a fabricated “wood-look”, it’s printed on the plank and it can get a little pattern-y for my preference! If you can see the pattern in our floors and it bothers you, I’d recommend getting a lower contrast color/finish. Our contractors knew this ahead of time and did an excellent job!

I dusted and then cleaned the floors using a Bona Mop I already had on hand and it worked great! Another perk of LVP? The flooring is durable so if you spill something, it shouldn’t damage the flooring! We’re hoping this will hold up for many, many years to come!

What questions do you have for us about our LifeProof Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring? Have you used LVP in your home?

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