Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to chime in about my Novalis experience.

Overall, I am happy with the product although in some cases when the planks are not quite next to each other and have just a sliver of space between them, I can see a line of white that might bug me a little. It doesnt look like this is due to them popping up but IÂve got boxes of novalis weighting them down today to see. If they remain, I may try to stain them with a furniture pen or shoe polish or something.

(Did anyone else have this experience? If so, how did you fix it?)

If youÂre thinking about Novalis, here are random thoughts that come to mind. (Did I mention that IÂm just now having coffee, so.....?)

Spend the time on prep. It took me a few days to properly clean, fill, sand, re-clean my floor, and latex prime my floor. Hopefully this will give me good adhesion.

You might look at some tiles on the floor in different light to make sure youÂre happy with it. In some light I really love the flooring. In other light it does look a little vinyl-y.

Fit just one row at a time, L to R or R to L. You might be tempted to stay in one area and put planks in top to bottom as well, but if you get off just a *tad*, the pieces wonÂt fit as you move to a new section and youÂll have to pull them up. (Once they are down in a grouping, itÂs hard to pull them up. It only took this happening once for me to get it.)

Look at the piece before you put it down. Several of my corners were crushed/scratched and a few planks were scratched. Better to see it before it goes down.

Get knee pads if you have a large space. I have a 16 x 13 space that took about 5 hours and I was really sore after. I had a movable pad but knee pads would have been better.

Aim for a locking sensation like when you put pieces in a puzzle. I tried to really push the planks over next to one another.

I found some of my planks were *really* stickyÂand made a mess on me and the planks. It also made them tough to cut. The others werenÂt very sticky at all. Have Goo-Gone nearby.

I think the paper backs are recyclable. Need to call about this, but recycle if you can. :-)

I took off my baseboards but hadnÂt realized that IÂd also need to take off the featherboard on my doors on order to lay the flooring. Yikes. ThatÂs going to take a while. (I donÂt quite have it in me today.) I suppose any flooring would have required this but I wish I'd thought of it. (I maybe have missed this in the directions...but don't recall it.)

As per some other posters, I mixed boxes and fanned the flooring out around me to make sure I had a variety of planks to choose from to ensure planks weren't all the same near one another. I also slid around on the planks in my socks rather than renting a 100-lb roller.

I did a sample layout for a few rows and realized my end planks wouldn't be 1/2 plank long as per Novalis directions. I called and the customer service person said I could "lay them anyway that I wanted" and that this wouldn't be a problem. I had her pass me on to a manager since the directions concerned me. He also said "no problem" but it looks like it could be trouble. So, after doing the pyramid pattern as recommended, I moved the pattern down a bit (maybe a foot) to ensure my ends were larger than the little 4" bits I had.) Those just seem to flimsy. Maybe when my baseboards are in, they will seem sturdier.)

Overall, given that the price is about 1/10th of what wood would have cost ($450 vs. 4500-5K, IÂm pretty happy. I also like that I could do it myself. One of the cats got sick on it last night and I just cleaned it up. Fabulous!

I will attempt photos in a follow up but need to get to work.