New Vinyl Plank Flooring (Over Tile!)

Now that I FINALLY have some decent current pics of the house since we moved in, I can share all about the luxury vinyl plank flooring we had put in right after we closed. They made it an entirely new house!

As is super common here in south Texas, the house had large ceramic tile flooring installed throughout.  Living areas, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms…even the front porch has the same tile.  Our previous home had tile in the living areas and I was just never a fan.  I am thankful that the tile in the old house and in this one was a bit more attractive and our style than a lot I see in homes around here, but we just never loved the coldness, the stark restaurant feel, or lack of warmth style-wise.  I really wanted to find a home that had anything but tile, but that is nearly impossible in this region unfortunately.  

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

This tile was in good shape, no cracks or blemishes, but the grout was super dirty and again, we just didn’t want a tiled home again.  We knew the very first thing we’d do if we got the house was have new flooring laid so once we went into escrow I started shopping around and navigating the millions of options.

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Selecting Our Vinyl Plank Flooring

Since this house has quite a few areas that don’t get great natural light I wanted to keep the floors light and clean with an almost whitewashed look.  I didn’t want a lot of rustic knots in the pattern and also wanted the planks to blend together well so I didn’t want a beveled edge or a lot of contrast between plank colors.  My dream floors would have been a light engineered hardwood like these from Jenna Sue and Chris Loves Julia, gorgeous!

via Jenna Sue
via Chris Loves Julia

Unfortunately engineered was out of our budget but I was determined to find a vinyl plank as close to that look as I could.  I met with a number of local flooring stores and ended up using AmeriFloors out of Corpus Christi.  They had an amazing selection, competitive prices, and were the sweetest people to work with through all my very specific look requirements as well as crazy closing date changes that kept affecting install.  Plus our close friends used them for their new floors a few years ago and raved about them.

After a ton of samples and quotes, we ended up going with the Triumph New Standard II line from Engineered Floors in “Key Largo”.  They have a bit more knotting and contrast than I was hoping for but their wood tone was nice and neutral, not too cool or gray like SO MANY samples I tried.  

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Installing Our Vinyl Plank Flooring

Install started the Monday after we finally closed on the house and started with the crew doing three layers of mortar over the tile to make it even.  They did half the house at one time so that we could move our stuff back and forth accordingly and also have a place to sleep.  We really tried to have this done before we moved in but the closing delays made us have to lease back and move in before closing unfortunately. So we just brought in the minimum stuff we needed for those two weeks leading up to this. 

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home
first coat
Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home
second coat

The crew had hoped two coats of prep would do the job, but they went ahead and did a third to be safe.  They did all the prep first which took two days, then laying the floor and quarter round took two and a half.  I was home with Connor the week of install and it was hard to keep a three year old out of wet mortar but we just hung out in the backyard all day and would go run errands and bring back lunch for the team. 

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

 I was so nervous about having a flooring crew do work in our new home because we had a horrible experience with installers when we had laminate put in the bedrooms of our old house, but this crew was phenomenal and were so kind and nice.  It was a hard week of weird sleeping situations, mess everywhere, and having to move stuff every single night, but we knew it would all be worth it. 

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

Feels Like A Whole New House

These edited pics show the color more accurately, they are a beautiful light neutral wood tone with a few darker boards and knotting throughout.  Once a lot of the spaces were broken up by rugs and furniture the knotting doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.  

Having luxury vinyl plank in a light wood tone installed over ceramic tile in our new home

The floors looked even better when we got the walls in the living areas painted white.  The tone keeps everything warm and cozy but is still whitewashed enough to go with our coastal relaxed style and it made every room look so much bigger.  Plus the plank is so much warmer and comfortable underfoot and feels much more clean than the tile.  

We are so happy we had this done right after we moved in, not just because we didn’t have to move everything in yet then, but it really made the home more warm and welcoming and “ours” right from the start.  It feels like an entirely different house now.  If you’re in the Coastal Bend area and are looking to have new floors done, we can’t recommend John and Beverly with Ameri-Floors enough.

We did one other big update to the house right after the floors were done – white paint in all the living areas!  I’ll be back soon to share all about that process…what it was before, why we hired it out, and the difference it made…stay tuned!

 

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36 thoughts on “New Vinyl Plank Flooring (Over Tile!)

  1. Beautiful!! I have tile in my kitchen and yucky carpet in the living room so maybe I will do both with LVP. I appreciate the details of your new house’s flooring project, thank you!

  2. Why did you have to lay mortar over the tile? I’ve read it’s ok to lay LVP directly over the tile.
    Just curious because we too are moving into a house with all tile.

    1. The mortar was done to even out the grout lines and uneven surface of the tile. If your tile and grout is pretty level then it may not be needed, but ours had deep grout lines and an irregular surface which would have made the vinyl plank unlevel/wavy and with hollow spots underneath when we walk on it.

  3. Hi!
    We are looking at the sane exact flooring, your pictures really helped us decide.
    How is the floor holding up as far as scratches and denting. This is our first experience with vinyl plank flooring. Thank you!!

    1. I’m so glad it could help! We have had zero issues since installing them last year, they look brand new still. We don’t have a dog so I can’t vouch for how they’d hold up to that, but we do have a 4yo who pushes toys and stuff around on them all the time. Any spills/messes have cleaned up perfectly. Go for it!

      1. That makes me feel so much better. We are definitely going with it, so excited!! One more question, what is the name of the white paint you used in your living area?

        1. You’ll love it! We did Sherwin-Williams “Greek Villa” in our living areas and have been super happy with it, its got just enough warmth without being too ivory.

          1. I came across your post on Pinterest and was surprised and excited to see a blog from nearby. We live an hour north west in Beeville. We vacation in Rockport often. And I could cry happy tears when you said your walls are painted Greek Villa. That’s the color I picked out for our home- we used it in a flip and loved it. I just wasn’t sold on a LVP brand/color and I love what you picked out with your wall color.

          2. Hi neighbor!! I still love our Greek Villa so much, it’s just the perfect white. And the floors have held up great, just a few small scratch areas where we didn’t have felt underneath items we moved around a bunch, but that’s it.

  4. Did you have any carpet that you changed to the vinyl also? House is all tile except for the 4 bedrooms. I would like it to be all vinyl flooring but not sure about the height difference from the vinyl over tile area and the height of the rooms that had carpet.

    1. No, there wasn’t any carpet in this house, everything went over existing tile. I believe in some instances it can go over carpet, but best to speak with the company who will be installing it and see what options they recommend. They may need to remove the carpet then add an additional subfloor layer to bring it to height, but not sure.

  5. We are getting ready to move to Corpus and this just made my day! Did you go ahead and do the vinyl in your bathrooms too? I’m hoping to be there the beginning of June and will be focusing on new flooring and painting the interior. Do you mind sharing who you used for painting?

    1. Welcome to the Coastal Bend Lindsey! Yes we put the vinyl in the two guest bathrooms as well, but didn’t do our master bathroom as we are hoping to remodel that in the next few years and will do a tile in there. We used Tony Aleman (361.557.1781) for painting the living spaces and he did great work and was really quick. Feel free to email me if you have any other questions!

  6. Hi Emily! Love this idea – I have tile all through my house that I hate too lol. Do you mind sharing how much it cost for them to do the mortar? Curious to gauge how much it would compare to me just having the tile taken up :)
    Thank you!!!

    1. Hi Laura! I don’t have the invoice accessible but do know that the overall cost was around $14k for about 2200ft2, with about $7k of that being labor. They originally planned on just doing two skimcoats of mortar but decided to do three once they got started to make sure it leveled the tile out fully. So depending on what kind of tile you have you may or may not need that many coats. I didn’t price out tile removal at all as we didn’t have the timeline, or tolerance, for that mess lol.

  7. Hi! I was wondering what paint colors you used for the bedrooms you have pictured? I’m looking into the same flooring but I’m worried that my primary paint color neutral ground will not look great with it

    1. Hi! The living area and office are SW “Greek Villa”, the primary bedroom is SW “White Heron”, and the other two bedrooms are the original colors when we moved on which I don’t know exactly what they are. Our son’s room is similar to SW “Popular Gray” though and the guest room is close to SW “Sea Salt” if that helps any. The flooring really is quite light and neutral and I can see it going with a large range of colors.

  8. Did they take up the quarter round and baseboard trim and take the trim off the door frame to be able to slide the flooring under the door frame?

    1. We did not have existing quarter-round because it was tile before, but yes they trimmed the bottoms of the door frames for the flooring to fit underneath and then installed quarter-round throughout afterwards.

  9. I just had my kitchen redone and had a similar style of vinyl floors put in! I’m obsessed! We ripped the old tile out and laid the LVP down, but it was a fairly easy process. I’m considering redoing the primary bedroom and the kid’s rooms with it. I love the cozy carpet, but the process to clean the tile is so easy, and I can place various rugs for a more comfortable space. I was talking to my carpet cleaners after I put down my floors, and they also have professional vinyl floor cleaning, so I can be sure that my house is clean. How do you like having the vinyl in bedrooms?

    1. We love not having carpet anywhere in the house and the vinyl in the bedrooms is still warm and inviting. We have rugs down in each room which accents it nicely and makes it cozy underfoot still.

  10. I have a sample of the same floor and was happy to see your post! They are beautiful! Just wondering how they are holding up after two years? We are also laying over tile.

    1. They have held up great!! There are only a couple areas where we’ve noticed some very faint scratching but that was due to some hard-bottomed items being pushed on them thanks to the kiddo. No other wear or fading or anything!

  11. This looks so lovely. Can i ask what the paint colours you used in the bedrooms and living areas are? It’s so warm and bright.

    1. Thank you so much! You can find paint colors to each space on this page. The guest room was that color when we moved in so I’m not sure what exactly it is, but it’s pretty close to SW “Sea Salt”.

    1. It is the “Key Largo” color. There is a photo at the top of the post with all of the information on the plank we used.

  12. Hi! We are looking at Greek Villa for our walls as well. Did you use Greek Villa for the trims too? I’m thinking to do extra white on the trims but I’m not sure!

    1. Hello! No, I didn’t paint the trim, just the walls. But our trim is actually SW Extra White and I can’t tell much of a difference against the Greek Villa. If I was doing it again, I probably would have the trim done in GV also but it really isn’t very noticeable, at least in the light in our house.

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