How to lay linoleum on a wooden floor with your own hands: stages of work and laying nuances

Linoleum flooring remains one of the most comfortable, pleasant and unpretentious types of flooring. Its practicality is also characterized by its wide application and installation on various types of substrates. Therefore, many will ask how to lay linoleum on a wooden floor.

How to put linoleum on a wooden base

What kind of linoleum to put on a wooden floor

Before laying linoleum on a wooden floor, you must select the appropriate type of linoleum.

Important! Before you go to the store, do not forget to measure the room. At the same time, add 10 cm to the resulting length and width to facilitate the installation process.


Linoleum laid in one piece will be much easier to care for

There is a huge range of material on the market with different web widths - from 2 to 6 meters. But household flooring in most cases has a width range of 2-4 meters. In this case, it is best to use a solid canvas for flooring, because:

  • Covering the whole is much easier.
  • Get a complete floor covering.
  • There is no need to buy decorative plugs at the joints of the canvases or use an adhesive composition.

In this case, the material can be different not only in characteristic dimensions, but also in structure, base and other features.

  • on a wooden floor, you can put various linoleum. You can use flooring with a foamed PVC base or fabric. The difference is that the fabric base gives the coating plasticity and is the simplest option with a fairly high level of strength. And the foamed base has higher rates of noise and heat insulation;

The process of spreading linoleum
  • it is more practical to take material without a base, which has improved resistance to various mechanical loads;
  • environmental friendliness. It should be borne in mind that a product made from natural raw materials will be 100% safe for health, but with a shorter service life. Experts say that synthetics are not particularly harmful to health. To believe or not is up to each individual;
  • thickness. A 4 mm thick coating on a wooden floor can last a sufficient period of time, while it cannot be damaged during installation.

As it probably became clear, when choosing, you need to evaluate many parameters. Not all the best qualities of a product can go in one set, so you may have to give up something in order to win in another.

Revision of the old plank floor

So, the trip to the construction market ended successfully: linoleum was purchased in sufficient quantities, you can proceed to the assessment of the old plank floor. An audit is required before laying linoleum on a wooden floor.


Linoleum in an old wooden house must be placed on a solid foundation

To do this, you need to walk along it, and best of all, jump to check the condition of the floorboards and the lag system. Squeaks and wobbles of the floor can be corrected by tightening with self-tapping screws. In addition, the audit of the state of the floor includes the following steps:

  • visual inspection. The color of the floorboards is natural, without characteristic changes. If there are places with blue, then you can verify the quality of the wood with a screwdriver. Strong wood cannot be pierced so easily.
  • Fungus and mold. Normal humidity is characterized by the fact that it should not contain fungi, mold and other microorganisms that can harm the health of family members. You need to check in the gaps between the floorboards.
  • Bark beetles. This is another one of the possible problems that can easily affect natural linoleum. Cork flour will be to the taste of pests. In their presence, it is necessary to process with special compounds.
  • For a more accurate check, you need to remove a couple of floorboards from different parts of the floor and inspect their underside. For efficiency, you can tap with a hammer. A dull sound will indicate the presence of rot. Is it possible to lay linoleum on a wooden floor with rotten boards? The answer is no.
  • Horizontal and even coverage. Linoleum will need to be laid on a flat base.

Qualitatively carried out preparatory work will be the key to durable flooring in general, regardless of how to lay linoleum on a wooden floor. The health of family members will also depend on this. As noted, mold has an extremely negative effect on humans.

Foundation preparation

After the audit is completed, you can proceed to the direct preparation of the base. We lay linoleum on a wooden floor after the following steps and work:

  • Removal of old paint. If the floorboards were covered with paints and varnishes, then they need to be disposed of. A layer of paint will interfere with the subsequent stages of installation and preparation of the base.
  • Deepening the heads of self-tapping screws and nails. Nail nails so that they cannot harm the canvases. In this case, it is best to replace the loosened nails with screws of a larger diameter.
  • Scraping the surface if the base is quite strong, but has irregularities. Floorboards often change their surface: they swell or sag in the middle. To make the surface horizontally flat, use a grinder.

Before laying the coating, you need to sand the surface
  • Putty floorboard gaps. Putty is necessary to prevent unhindered entry of moisture to the base of the canvases. It will also be necessary to do the same with nail heads: they must be hidden with a layer of putty.

Attention! If the floor has strong differences in height, then it will not be possible to achieve horizontal evenness by grinding. In such cases, resort to other methods of alignment.

Plank base leveling methods

You can imagine two simple ways to level the plank floor for laying linoleum:

  • Self leveling compound. You need to use mixtures that are designed specifically for plank bases. In this case, the solution will level itself in level, which greatly facilitates the process.
  • Wood boards. Laying linoleum on OSB, fiberboard or plywood is very convenient. This helps to level the surface, as well as to achieve greater strength, because the loads will be distributed over several floorboards at once. For fastening, you can use adhesive or self-tapping screws.

The final step in preparing the base is cleaning the surface. At the same time, it is not necessary to use an additional waterproofing layer or insulation material with linoleum with a good underlay.

Linoleum preparation


You can do your own flooring

It is worth noting some features of the transportation and storage of linoleum before starting installation work:

  • Rolls must not be bent during transfer. Bends will form creases, which will turn into cracks during operation. Therefore, you should not buy long rolls if there is no free opportunity to bring them to the upper floors of an apartment building.
  • After the base is ready for laying, you need to lay the canvases at the place of laying and let it rest for a couple of days, while leveling it from the center.
  • Storage and installation temperature must be at least 16 degrees. Humidity is considered optimal at 40–60%.

Here are some simple tips for storage and transportation conditions. After the linoleum has acclimatized, you can proceed with the installation with your own hands.

Laying linoleum on a wooden floor

There are several ways to lay linoleum on a wooden floor:

  • Without the use of an adhesive base. This installation method is suitable for solid canvases, which are fixed along the perimeter of the room with skirting boards. At the same time, there is a limitation on the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe room - 12 square meters. That is, a 3x4 m canvas will be easier to lay than to glue linoleum to a wooden floor, while in the doorway it must be fixed with a threshold. If there is no real threshold, you can purchase a decorative bar. The disadvantage of this method is that the coating wears out faster, and waves can form on it.
  • Double-sided tape. This method, oddly enough, is widely used. A double-sided adhesive tape is glued around the perimeter of the canvas and in several strips across the entire width, on which linoleum sits.
  • Glue method. This linoleum flooring is used on a wooden floor for rooms with an area of ​​​​more than 20 square meters. Dispersion adhesive can be used, which is applied to the entire area, because it has a weak strength. Reactive glue is used like double-sided tape, while the canvas is fixed using a dot method. After the installation is completed, it is necessary to wait 7-10 days until the glue is completely set, and only after that put the room into operation.

Attention! To ensure a secure fit of the coating laid on the adhesive or adhesive tape, you can use a roller.

If laying linoleum on a wooden floor with a solid canvas is impossible, then you have to use two or more pieces of linoleum. At the same time, the canvases are overlapped on top of each other, cut along the ruler with a knife and the seams are joined. There are the following methods:

  • decorative threshold. The seam will be clearly observed, in addition, the threshold can cause certain inconvenience;

We nail a decorative threshold at the junction of two rooms
  • Double-sided tape. Glue like mounting around the perimeter, which does not provide high strength and durability;
  • cold welding. There are two types of adhesive with different degrees of viscosity that form an even sealed seam;
  • hot welding. This method is used with commercial grades of flooring because thin linoleum can melt easily. It is not very safe to use it on a tree.

Do-it-yourself installation of linoleum on a wooden floor with your own hands is not at all difficult. It is worth remembering that high-quality styling is the key to durability.

A short video on how to properly lay linoleum:

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