Luxury Vinyl Plank In
Innsbrook, From The
Hillside Level Up

Innsbrook has 1,423 housing units on 10.019 square miles, a median year built of 1991, and a Village comprehensive plan that describes the majority of the homes (chalets) in Innsbrook Resort as restricted to second home or recreational use. Plank is the material people here ask about for the level that meets the ground and for the long open floor above it. What the material is made of sits on the luxury vinyl plank pillar. This page is about the rooms it goes into out here, and the village itself is on Innsbrook. Call 636-332-0654.

The level that sits against the hillside

The Warren County Master Plan describes the county's terrain as running from rough hilly terrain to rolling hills, and Innsbrook Resort describes its golf course as carved out of the rolling wooded hillsides of eastern Missouri. A house on that ground has a level that is partly in the hill, and that level is where a plank conversation usually starts. Before we plan anything for it we want to know what it is built on, how the ground drains around it, and what the room has already been through.

Two documented local conditions belong on that list. The first is karst: sinkholes, caves and the hydrology that goes with them are a recognized development consideration in Warren County around Innsbrook. The second is water at the surface. The Village's comprehensive plan says the area has only a few areas of concern with regard to flooding because it sits at the crest of two drainage basins, and it also records floodplain and flood prone areas along streams including Charrette Creek.

One run from the entry to the gable glass

A-frame chalets are the community's signature building type, and the plan that follows from them is open. That hands a plank floor an unusually long uninterrupted run, with very few doorways to break it up. A long run is unforgiving of a subfloor that is not flat, because a dip that would hide under furniture in a small room becomes a visible line of light across twenty feet of plank. So the straightedge comes out at the measure and we walk the whole length of the run, not just the middle of each room.

Where the floor has to step, because the house does

A house that steps with a hillside has changes of level inside it, and each one is a place the floor has to stop and start again cleanly. In a plan with plenty of doorways those changes hide themselves. In an open chalet they are on show from the middle of the room, so the nosing, the riser and the way the plank meets the edge get decided in front of you rather than improvised. This is the detail that most often separates a plank floor that looks planned from one that looks fitted.

A kitchen in a house that is empty on a Tuesday

A weekend house takes its use in bursts, and the kitchen takes the sharpest of them. It is also the room where nobody is present to catch a slow problem: a drip noticed within the hour in a primary residence can sit for a fortnight in a chalet. That is why plank comes up so often for kitchens here, and it deserves a straight conversation about what the material does and does not do rather than a slogan.

What is under a 1990s or 2000s chalet kitchen

27.5 percent of Innsbrook's housing dates from the 1990s and 18.0 percent from the 2000s. In a kitchen from either wave the cabinets were almost certainly set on top of the original floor, which means the choice between lifting that floor and working over it is also a choice about height. Height decides whether the dishwasher still comes out, whether the toe kick still reads correctly, and whether the door into the room still swings. In a compact chalet kitchen open to the main volume, all three are visible from the sofa, so we measure them rather than estimate them.

Boxes can go where a truck cannot

Plank arrives in boxes, and that turns out to be an advantage at this address. The Village's Transportation Plan calls the private roads serving residents, Innsbrook Resort included, narrower and more curved than streets built today, and notes they are not always paved. Where a long roll or a loaded pallet needs the truck close to the door, boxes can be carried the last part of the way. We still confirm gate access, because the primary gates into Innsbrook Resort open off Route F and the owner arranges it.

Pattern repeat only shows across several boards

One chip of plank tells you the color and nothing about the floor. Repeat, plank width and how obviously the pattern cycles only become visible across several boards, and on a chalet run of this length a repeat you did not notice in a sample becomes the thing you see every time you walk in. That is worth a trip to the showroom, 14.1 road miles and about 29 minutes from your door, to lay several boards out and stand on them.

The lines we carry are Mohawk, Casabella, National Flooring Products, ProGen, Bruce, Audacity, Armstrong, Portercraft, Adleta, Engineered Floors, PureGrain, FirmFit, MetroFlor, Paramount, Nextfloor, MSI and Tarkett. That is a long bench, which is useful, because narrowing it down in person takes one visit and narrowing it down from photographs takes several.

Where plank is not the answer in an Innsbrook chalet

Not every room in one of these houses wants a hard floor. The loft and the sleeping rooms are usually better served by carpet in Innsbrook, which also deals with the sloped wall line and the open loft edge. A main level well above grade in a house held at a steady condition may be a candidate for solid hardwood in Innsbrook instead. The in-home measure is where those get sorted room by room, free, at your address, with the tape and the straightedge out.