START by clearing the room and unrolling the vinyl. Trim the vinyl roughly to fit, leaving 5cm or more excess all around the edge of the room. If there are any large areas where the vinyl will be wasted, such as a fireplace hearth, roughly cut around them now, again allowing at least 5cm excess to make the vinyl more manageable. Cut down through the excess to the floor at the corners of the room, then cut the vinyl to fit along the walls. To do this, take a block of wood and use it to press the vinyl into a crease along the bottom of the skirting boards, trimming off the excess neatly with a sharp craft knife - you may find it easier to use a metal ruler when cutting. If you cut the vinyl too short, either pull some over from the other side of the room if possible, or hide your mistake with a piece of beading, which you can fix to the skirting board as you would with laminate flooring. Awkward objects, such as toilets, can be tricky to negotiate. To fit the vinyl around something like this, cut it down from the top of the excess to the floor every few centimetres. Once you’ve made cuts all around the base of the object and pushed the vinyl in place, neatly trim to fit. When you’ve finished laying the floor, leave it for a few days to settle, then fix it in place at the doorway with vinyl tape. For a neat edge and to prevent the vinyl being torn, fit a metal threshold strip to cover the join between the vinyl and the flooring on the other side of the door, being careful not to screw through any cables or pipes underneath. If you want to lay a DIY-friendly wood floor but don’t like the look of laminate, Quick-Step has launched a range of engineered wood flooring. Quick-Step Parquet comes in three styles - Pallazo, Castello and Villa - and lots of different colours and woods. The boards are 14mm thick, with a 3mm top layer of real wood. This is coated with seven layers of durable anti-yellowing varnish (in a matt, silk or satin finish), which resists scratches and wear, keeping it looking good for longer. The boards are easy to lay thanks to the Uniclic Multifit click-and-fit system developed for the company’s laminate floors. Prices range from £42.99 to £83.99 a square metre. Find out more at www.quick-step.com. If you’re planning to redo your bathroom or shower room, check out the new additions at B&Q. The company is selling Armitage Shanks bathrooms for the first time. Armitage Shanks Sandringham loos and basins are available in-store now and an exclusive Armitage Shanks suite for B&Q will be available later in the year. B&Q’s new bathroom brochure will be out in August and will feature about 90 new shower enclosures, ranging in price from £99 to £1,659. See www.diy.com for more details. SEASONAL TASK... If you have a garden, you’re probably mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges quite often at the moment. When doing this, stay safe by keeping the mower or hedge trimmer in front of you, feeding the cable (if it has one) over your shoulder, using a residual current device and wearing sturdy boots or shoes. This applies to most power tools used in the garden. | 
