Laying Allure Vinyl Flooring Over Indoor & Outdoor Glued Carpeting

Allure flooring is made of durable vinyl material, but it looks more like wood laminate flooring and goes down like its laminate cousin, not like the vinyl flooring from your childhood or your grandparents' home. While it's relatively simple to lay down Allure flooring over hard surfaces, installing it over glued carpeting is a different matter.

Allure floors are floating floors. This means that they "float" over the surface underneath rather than adhering to the starting surface. Since Allure flooring is vinyl, it's not very stiff. Thus, it goes down best over concrete, wood, linoleum or any other hard surface. Installation over soft surfaces, such as carpeting, is not recommended by the manufacturer and will void the manufacturer's warranty. However, that's not to say that it can't be done — at least in some instances.

When indoor and outdoor carpeting is glued down, removing the carpeting to get to the hard surface underneath can be a daunting undertaking. Installing Allure flooring over plush indoor carpeting should not be attempted, because, as you walk on the vinyl flooring, the carpeting underneath will give significantly. This may cause the joints of your Allure flooring to come unglued or unlocked. However, if you have short stiff or tightly woven carpeting, this should not be a major problem, so you can attempt to lay down Allure flooring on top.

Allure is only meant for installation in interior spaces with controlled temperatures. Thus, if you plan to install it over outdoor carpeting in a patio or other area exposed to direct sunlight or the elements, be aware that your flooring may not last very long. Also, Allure does not require a prepared surface, so although pulling up a glued-down carpet may take some elbow grease, once the carpet is up, you don't have to do anything to the surface underneath to prepare it for the Allure flooring. Thus, while it may mean more work than attempting to lay down the flooring over the carpeting, in the long run, it may be better to pull up the existing carpeting, because it will keep you from voiding the warranty on your new floor.

Your boxed Allure flooring should be left for a few days in the room where it will be installed to allow the material to adjust to the temperature and moisture in the room. Once you score the flooring, the individual planks break off and are ready to be laid down. Adhesive on the edges of each plank or interlocking edges hold the planks together. Walking on the seams after all the planks have been laid down helps the sticky edges adhere to each other better if your Allure flooring uses adhesive.