How to lay vinyl floor tiles & revamp a tired kitchen

About a year and a half ago I painted my ugly peach kitchen tiles white, and since then I’ve been on a mission to improve the rest of the room. Because as soon as I update one part, the rest looks even worse than before. But without having the budget for a full kitchen revamp, there’s lots of little mini-updates and quick fixes you can make to improve a dated kitchen. So far I've also replaced the worktops and sink, and would also love to replace the cupboard handles too.

The grim before - we think this vinyl was 20 years old! And the kitchen in all its peach-tiled glory - before I started my quick-fixes

One of these is replacing our tired, grubby vinyl floor. I've wanted to change this for a while, but with no budget for professionally laid ceramic tiles it had to be another vinyl I could easily fit myself. I've previously replaced a vinyl in our bathroom, and although it's time consuming it's perfectly do-able on your own. I decided on some self-adhesive tiles rather than a roll of vinyl for in here though, as I love the fact that they look more like the real thing.

So after waiting pretty much the entire of lockdown for these peel and stick tiles to come back in stock, I finally managed to get hold of some! These are 'Floor Pops', and you can buy them from a range of places such as Amazon and Homebase, but I bought mine from Dunelm.

You will need:

Vinyl Pops tiles - I went for the Remy design, and you get 10 in a pack. Each tile measures 30cmx30cm, so make sure you measure your room properly in order to get the right number of packs (I actually over-estimated a bit and have two full packs leftover which I might use in the ensuite!)
Scissors
Pencil
Paper
Stanley knife
Tape measure/ruler

Total cost: £98

You could pull your existing floor up if you wanted to, but I decided not to bother and laid the tiles directly on top of my current vinyl.

Before you start, its really important to make sure your floor is completely clean, and there's no grease or grime on it at all. I used a scrubbing brush and some floor cleaner all over mine and left to dry before starting. This is to make sure the vinyl sticks down properly. 

For me the trickiest bit was working out where to place the first tile. I faffed about for quite a while before deciding to start at one far end of the kitchen. I wanted to make sure the patterns were even both sides, so measured across the floor and worked out where the centre point was. I then placed two tiles either side of centre point, and worked outwards from that, and it actually (and really helpfully) worked out that four tiles fitted really nicely across this narrowest part of the kitchen. I then worked my way across the rest of the floor, laying all the full tiles first.

Laying the tiles themselves are really simple. Pull the backing off, and carefully place the tile down onto the floor, making sure its straight. Then line up the next tile and place as close as possible to the first one.

After you're finished with all the whole tiles, you'll be left with the edges of the floor to do, and this is where you’ll need to cut tiles. To do this, I found it easiest to cut using a tape measure/ruler to measure the gaps you have and cut out a section of tile to fit. The vinyl can be cut with scissors, which is really handy, but you could use a Stanley knife if you'd prefer.

In some cases though, for example this tricky section behind the door, I found the best thing to do was to draw out a template using a piece of paper. Placing the paper on the floor, I simply drew around the shape, and then used it to cut the exact shape out of a tile.

And you're all done! As simple as that. In total this took me about 5 hours one afternoon - and look at the transformation! I'm so pleased with this, although it has now made me want to paint the cupboards - it's never ending...

What do you think? Do you have a room in your home that you'd love to completely revamp but its not an option right now? Is this something you'd like to try?

Thanks for reading,
Sam Xx