With the template all made up and inspected by my lovely wife it was time to cut it out. I had been planning on doing this in the driveway or in the garage, but with a foot of snow on the ground, and 20 degree temperatures, that didn’t sound like such a good idea. So instead we cleaned out the living room, and did it there. Cutting the template out was actually a bit difficult. A regular utility knife with a sharp blade still tended to tear the paper, and was instantly dulled by the cement floor. I was therefore a little worried about cutting the flooring, particularly in the living room with its nice hard wood floors. However I remembered that I had a few of the hook blades left from when i was cutting up the carpet in the family room. These blades worked incredibly well, and I would highly recommend them to anyone cutting flooring like this. I paid careful attention to my cuts as although you can glue it back together, I really didn’t want to make any mistakes on our $600 piece of vinyl.
Speaking of which, I should mention that this is not actually vinyl flooring, its technically called resilient flooring. Its made by Tarkett and is their FiberFloor product. Its got a bunch of layers, a nice cushioned high density foam on the back, a fiberglass layer in the middle, with the pattern printed on it, and then a thick urethane layer on top that is textured to match the pattern. We liked it because of its cushion layer, as it feels great underfoot.