Luxury vinyl plank across
a Weldon Spring main level

Rigid cores, wear layers and how a plank is made waterproof belong to the luxury vinyl plank pillar. This page is about what plank actually meets in Weldon Spring, where the median home was finished in 1995 and 2,199 housing units share a broadly similar shape. In that house the kitchen is not a separate room to be floored on its own. It is one end of a run, and it holds every obstacle the run has to get around.

The kitchen here has already changed floors at least once

A kitchen floor does not last thirty years in a house people cook in, so what is down in a 1995 kitchen is usually not what the builder laid. That matters at the removal stage, because the second covering may have gone over the first rather than replacing it, and because the change was often made with only the kitchen in mind rather than the whole level.

So the first thing established here is how many layers there are and what each one is bonded to. That single answer moves more of a quote than the plank anybody finally chooses, and it is the plain reason a kitchen in this stock cannot be priced from a telephone call.

Cabinets and toe kicks were set to the floor that came out first

In this generation of kitchen the cabinets were fitted against one finished height and the toe kick was scribed to it. Every covering added since has moved that height, and the appliances have had to live with the result. A dishwasher that will not come out over a raised floor is the classic problem in a kitchen of this age, and it tends to be discovered at the worst possible moment.

We take the height at the toe kick, at the dishwasher opening and at the range, then work out what the new build up does to each of them before anything is ordered. Sometimes the honest answer is that an old layer has to come out to keep the appliances serviceable. That belongs in the quote, not in a conversation on the day.

Running one plank through an opening with no door in it

The kitchen in a plan of this age opens to a family room without a wall between them, which is precisely why one floor across both has become the usual answer. The opening is not a doorway, so there is nothing to hide a change in, but a plan of this generation does leave break points elsewhere on the level, and the real choice is whether to use them. Where the kitchen and the family room read as one field, the plank runs through and has to look right read from either side.

That turns layout into a whole floor decision rather than a room decision. We set the first line from the longest sightline in the connected space instead of from a kitchen wall, because from the moment anyone walks in, the boards are read as a single field rather than as two rooms that happen to match.

The obstacle end of the run gets counted, not averaged

One end of this run holds an island or a peninsula, the appliances, a pantry return and whatever the plan does at the back door. The other end is open floor. A quote written from square footage alone treats those two ends as the same thing, which is how a kitchen ends up short of material. The cuts at the working end are counted rather than spread across the room as an average.

Not every Weldon Spring address has open ground beneath it

76.0 percent of the city's housing is single unit detached, and 83.4 percent of occupied units are owner occupied, so the usual case is somebody planning a whole main level in a house standing on its own. A hard floor there answers only to the people walking on it, and the specification can be settled on looks, wear and how the run reads end to end.

The remaining share is attached or multi unit, and that is a different specification. When a floor has somebody's ceiling underneath it, sound stops being a preference and becomes part of the build up, which affects the underlayment, the total height and therefore every transition the run finishes at. We raise it at the measure rather than after the boxes arrive.

Where the run has to meet the carpet at the bottom tread

In most of these houses the stair rises straight out of the connected space and the carpet above it is staying. The run therefore has a visible finish line at the bottom tread, and the height it lands at gets felt with a bare foot long before anyone looks at it. We take that height with the pad accounted for, since it is not a thing to find out on install day. The soft side of the same decision is at carpet in Weldon Spring.

What the measure records in a Weldon Spring kitchen

The in home measure is free, and it is where the run gets planned rather than assumed.

• How many coverings are down, what each is bonded to, and whether any of them can honestly stay
• The finished height at the toe kick, the dishwasher opening and the range, before and after the new floor
• Flatness across the whole connected space rather than room by room, because one field cannot have two standards
• The longest sightline in that space, which sets the direction the boards run
• Where the run finishes at the bottom tread and at every doorway leading off the connected rooms

A full plank, seen in the light your own kitchen has

Kitchens are lit from above after dark and from one side during the day, and a plank that reads warm under our lights can read gray under yours. The showroom is 14.9 road miles away, close enough that taking full planks home and laying them where the sun actually falls is an evening rather than an expedition.

Bring a cabinet door if the kitchen itself is staying as it is, because matching the wood already in the room is most of the decision. Hours are on the showroom page, and the drive is set out on the Weldon Spring town page.

Plank lines we carry, and where this run ought to stop

Mohawk, Casabella, Armstrong, Bruce, Paramount, Portercraft, MetroFlor, FirmFit, ProGen, Tarkett and National Flooring Products are among the lines we can put in front of you. Where plank is not the right answer, the same house is covered at tile in Weldon Spring for the wet rooms, solid hardwood in Weldon Spring where real wood matters more than an unbroken run, and laminate in Weldon Spring for the stair and the hall above it. What the room itself asks for is weighed on the kitchen guide.