aylakay's Profile

Hey there everyone!
Well, I am back to post on allure again. Since my last post in January, we have been reset in the store with the Allure Tile (corfu and ashlar) and 2 new wood variations:Teak and Blonde Maple. We still have the Hickory, Oak, and Cherry. We have been selling special orders of the different tile looks as well as the different wood/exotics species as well as the cork look! My husband and I are thinking about installing the Ashlar tile plank in our kitchen!
As far as the most recent questions:
Allure is flexible, but with all vinyl/flexible products, they can only bend to a certain degree. If you wooden subfloor is tongue and groove, and there are nails or sharp edges sticking up, I would pound the nails in and sand down the sharp points before installing the allure.
As for the room with the radiator: As long as the room does not dip below 65 degrees, the room is ok to install in. The cold weather negatively affects the vinyl. But as you have read in the earlier posts, some people do not mind the look of spaces between planks, etc. that cold conditions bring.
As for the room with sheet vinyl: if the floor is in rough shape, you can either pull it up or lay plywood or luan over it. As long as you do not intend to ever lay ceramic tile or hardwood over the floor, luan is a cheap fix that will give you a thin layer of woody material to install allure over. This way you do not have to worry about the sheet vinyl affecting your planks of allure.
And Sunnyblaze wrote about her metrofloor, that is the product made by the same company that makes the allure planks, only it is the more durable, expensive, commercial version that requires glue down install. I would recommend a professional flooring company install that type of floor if that was the route you wanted to go-unless you have a small bathroom or entryway.
My husband and I are going to lay the allure tile in the kitchen then possibly the allure wood planks in the dining room. The laminate that we have in the kitchen is just not fitting our lifestyle with our dog who slides around on it too much and when we cook we tend to dribble food and water from the sink onto the floor. The allure will not be affected by the moisture like our current laminate will over time. So we are going to lift the laminate back up and put into my office and master closet (It's 7'x14'!) so that we aren't wasting our flooring!
I also wanted to let everyone know that I am extremely happy to announce that I recieved a call from another home depot associate, I do believe she was from North or South Dakota? If I remember right (sorry I was busy at work!) and she had a customer who had came into the store who had read my blog about special ordering allure, and I gave her Cate French's contact info so that she could get samples and everything needed to show her customer! That is so exciting! It's really amazing how far the internet can really reach when you think about it!
So I encourage you to have your local hd flooring associate call me @ the peru, IL. home depot, store #1977! and I can help them help you get the floor you want! :)

To everybody interested in the allure resilient vinyl by trafficmaster(manufacturer is Halstead of New England)-Home depot in Illinois(I'm not sure if all districts can get it or not) but I work at the one in Peru, IL. and I was browsing on the homedepot website doing so research on allure myself, since so many csrs were asking about other styles available-and all of a sudden i saw all of these different styles avail on site! So I called out to halstead new england, got a hold of our rep, cate french, and asked her if it would be possible to get samples in case csrs want to s/o those styles, and she said yes, but the sample boards were on backorder(due to the popularity of the product!) and she would put our store on the list, and in the meantime, she would cut up pcs of the planks and send them with little labels for csrs to at least see a pc of the planks. So I was so happy to get those little squares from her, and we had a lot of csrs come in and look at them. However, we didn't get our first big sales on the stuff until we recieved our large sample boards, with a lot larger version of the planks on them. So far, we have done about 4 large orders for the s/o in our store. And I'm sure a lot more. Granted, this stuff is what it is, don't expect miracles, but the best thing about it for us, is that its the only TRULY waterproof floor in the entire store. People love it also because anybody can lay it down, as long as you follow a few simple directions(such as leaving an expansion gap around the perimeter; letting the vinyl acclimate to the humidity and temps of the room you will be installing in; rolling the entire floor out with at least a 100lb roller; making sure to get the seams as tight as possible; making sure that you install it in a room that has heat vents so that it doesn't start to buckle-unless of course you like that look). The reason that it is waterproof is because the "grip strip" of adhesive on the sides of each plank interlock, and when the are rolled out, and firmly pressed together, if water or any liquid happens to spills directly over the seam, there is Literally no where for the liquid to go-it just beads up on top of that overlap. I also recieved this really helpful book in the mail from the company on allure, and it has helpful hints for install, care and maintenence, and all kinds of things you can't find on the web. Halstead also make a more commercial and more expensive line of resilient flooring called Metro Floor. They make planks and tiles and all that, but they all have to be glued down, just like the armstrong planks, amtico planks, roppe planks, etc. This idea has been around for a long time, but halstead has made an affordable, durable floor for most normal residentials floors that are guaranteed to not delaminate or wear through the top layer for 25 years. I think people misunderstand warranties on flooring a lot. When they say 25 year wear-that doesn't mean it WILL NOT scratch. It will just hold up a lot better as far as denting and gouging, compared to your traditional sheet vinyl and vinyl self adhesive squares. People need to remember to keep an eye on their animal's nails, make sure they are clipped correctly, to the right spot on their nails, and at the right angle, to prevent them from putting scratches in any hard surface material they walk on. Ok, I think I have gone on for far too long, but I just had to let everybody know that there are other options for trafficmaster, just go to your local home depot and let them know they can call cate french, they just need to call halstead(that is the vendor or manufacturer of this product) and they can do that by looking on their computers under the product description, and then click f10, and then click vendors, and it will give them the 800 number to call, and they should be able to give the associate the number to cate french. Any other ?'s feel free to ask!