Top tips for fitting vinyl

You've prepared the sub-floor for your sheet vinyl and now it's time to fit it. Julia Gray offers some advice

Follow these top tips for fitting your vinyl to avoid making costly mistakes.

:: Start by clearing the room and unrolling the vinyl. Trim the vinyl roughly to fit, leaving 5cm or more excess all around the edge of the room. If there are any large areas where the vinyl won't be needed, such as a fireplace hearth, roughly cut around them (again allowing at least 5cm excess) to make the vinyl more manageable.

:: Cut down through the excess to the floor at the corners of the room, then cut the vinyl to fit along the walls. To do this, take a block of wood and use it to press the vinyl into a crease along the bottom of the skirting board. Trim off the excess neatly using a craft knife and metal ruler.

:: If you cut the vinyl too short, either pull some over from the other side of the room (if possible), or hide your mistake with a piece of beading, which you can fix to the skirting board.

:: To fit the vinyl around awkward objects, such as a loo, cut it down from the top of the excess to the floor every couple of centimetres. Once you've made cuts all around the base of the object, push the vinyl in to place and trim it neatly to fit.

:: Leave the finished floor for a few days to settle, then fix it in place at the doorway with vinyl tape. For a neat edge and to prevent the vinyl being torn, fit a metal threshold strip to cover the join between the vinyl and the flooring on the other side of the door.