LESLIE: Norma in New York, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
NORMA: Yeah, hi. My kitchen, I’ve had like linoleum; like sheets of it and it’s glued like on the perimeter of the whole kitchen. This was like eight years ago. And it’s like shrinking from the perimeter of the kitchen.
LESLIE: OK, where the flooring meets the wall, is there a baseboard molding there? Is there a shoe molding? What kind of molding is there?
NORMA: Oh, I guess you’d say baseboard. It’s wooden.
TOM: OK. Typically, when you put a vinyl floor down, you would have a baseboard molding and then you would have what’s called a shoe molding which is sort of like a quarter-round molding.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Like a quarter-round.
TOM: Because you’re going to have shrinkage in a product like that and it sounds to me like what’s happened is it shrank more than whatever molding was covering it. So the easy solution here might be to add a shoe molding which is like a trim molding that can go against the baseboard and cover that loose edge.
LESLIE: Would you need to reglue down those edges so that there’s not further movement?
NORMA: Well, because there’s also like rippling underneath even away from the perimeter. You know what I mean? Like it’s rippled.
TOM: Well, in those areas you may need to have a flooring installer come in because there are special tools – usually big rollers; heavy rollers – that they use to try to pull some of that out. That’s not something you’re going to be able to do on your own but if it’s just a loose seam you can add an additional layer of trim and cover that up.
Norma, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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