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using Lowes edge precision flooring

91K views 68 replies 44 participants last post by  Judithtruly 
#1 ·
I am considering installing porcelain pre-attached backerboard quick snap edge flooring from Lowes and was wondering if anyone has read,installed or seen reviews on this product.
 
#3 · (Edited)
My experience.

Edge Flooring. What a great idea.

you might want to check what others had to say about this stuff, but this is my experience with it.. you can find other comments here -

John Bridge Tiling Forum - Edge Flooring

What a great idea this stuff is.. unfortunately, that's where the positive comments end.

I was at Lowes picking out tile for our master bathroom when my wife commented on spending a little extra on Edge flooring to help to save myself some labor. It seemed like a good idea.. I didn’t really mind the tiling or grouting, but was not looking forward to laying backerboard necessary as it was going to be a second floor installation.

The room is roughly 80 sq ft.

Here is a summary of the problems I had.

The sections being 2 sq feet instead of 1 required a little more planning and thought each time one was placed. I’ve done rooms with real tile before, and it’s mark, cut, and place. But with the edge flooring (maybe I was just getting tired) several times I measured and cut right, but realized when I tried to place the tile that I had cut it with the tongue and grooves on the wrong end.

Even if I chalk that up as my inexperience.. it was still frustrating – Each incorrect cut cost me $6.80, although in some instances I was able to reuse some of the incorrectly cut pieces.

Of concern to me is the way the tiles near the sides tend to rest higher than the main part of the floor.. because the floor sits on padding, it only makes sense that the tiles on the end are not compressing the padding as much. When stepped on those tiles noticeably depress. Not sure the result of this in the long term or not but it does not happen at all with real tile.

The saw and jigsaw blades were a waste of money.. the jigsaw blade lasted through 3 tiles before the cutting edge was nothing more than a bare strip of metal. The saw blade wasn’t any better than a diamond blade that I had for cutting, so I returned the blades and used the diamond one.

The door frame strips didn’t work correctly. Someone else had mentioned how they had to ‘rig’ it to work. Here’s the problem with the frame strips. They are designed to go from a lower surface to a higher (the higher being the tile). I can assume that it would have worked correctly if the previous flooring was laminate even with my old carpet and I was installing ON TOP of the laminate. (thus making the new surface higher).. But it seems to me the more common situation is to remove the old stuff (I had carpet in the room previously). Once installed the carpet is nearly the same level as the tile.. What Edge should do is have a door strip for each circumstance. I would have preferred to have the edge strip snap down over the edge of the carpet to hold it in place.

Grout. Wow.. This needs to really be a message all in itself. How bad is this stuff?

30 Sq Ft per can?!?! Anyone get that? I managed to get 19 Sq Feet for the first THREE cans.. Although, here’s a tip if you are insistent on using Edge flooring.. The Lowes had 2 types of cans.. I only assume now that one is maybe a newer design? The first set of cans I had had a white tip. The ones with the white tip came out way to quick at first. Sputtered in the middle, and then nearly quit working. I returned all of those and got the ones with the green tips on them, and the grout appears to come out a little more consistent. I haven’t completed the install yet so I’m not sure if this is what I will find with all the green tipped cans.

All in all with the project complete, it took me 14 cans to fill 88 Sq Ft of tile.. ($140 worth of grout) although alot of the cans I returned for a refund because only half the grout would come out. This is probably not typical because I had alot of corners and edges that needed to be filled. If the room had been 9x10 it would not have been nearly as bad.

Then there is the issue with the grout sinking into the crack. What’s going on with that? It looks like I’ll need to cover the entire floor twice with grout.. I’ll say that grouting with real tiles is a WHOLE LOT easier.. I could grout a whole floor with real grout in fraction of the time, and I’m just a home do-it-yourselfer.

I also want to mention that the Lowes I had originally purchased the tile was $34.50 per case ($3.40 per sq ft). But when I went to another to pick up an extra case they had it at $29.50 per case ($2.90 per sq ft). The first one refunded me the difference.. but thought that was weird as the less expensive Lowes didn’t have it on sale or clearance.. it was just their normal price.

-Zippyfear.
 
#42 ·
Please help

How is going so far . I purchased some last year and just started to install them when i went online to get a transition and found all this info.
please help . M.SEMAAN@COMCAST.net

Edge Flooring. What a great idea.

you might want to check what others had to say about this stuff, but this is my experience with it.. you can find other comments here -

John Bridge Tiling Forum - Edge Flooring

What a great idea this stuff is.. unfortunately, that's where the positive comments end.

I was at Lowes picking out tile for our master bathroom when my wife commented on spending a little extra on Edge flooring to help to save myself some labor. It seemed like a good idea.. I didn’t really mind the tiling or grouting, but was not looking forward to laying backerboard necessary as it was going to be a second floor installation.

The room is roughly 80 sq ft.

Here is a summary of the problems I had.

The sections being 2 sq feet instead of 1 required a little more planning and thought each time one was placed. I’ve done rooms with real tile before, and it’s mark, cut, and place. But with the edge flooring (maybe I was just getting tired) several times I measured and cut right, but realized when I tried to place the tile that I had cut it with the tongue and grooves on the wrong end.

Even if I chalk that up as my inexperience.. it was still frustrating – Each incorrect cut cost me $6.80, although in some instances I was able to reuse some of the incorrectly cut pieces.

Of concern to me is the way the tiles near the sides tend to rest higher than the main part of the floor.. because the floor sits on padding, it only makes sense that the tiles on the end are not compressing the padding as much. When stepped on those tiles noticeably depress. Not sure the result of this in the long term or not but it does not happen at all with real tile.

The saw and jigsaw blades were a waste of money.. the jigsaw blade lasted through 3 tiles before the cutting edge was nothing more than a bare strip of metal. The saw blade wasn’t any better than a diamond blade that I had for cutting, so I returned the blades and used the diamond one.

The door frame strips didn’t work correctly. Someone else had mentioned how they had to ‘rig’ it to work. Here’s the problem with the frame strips. They are designed to go from a lower surface to a higher (the higher being the tile). I can assume that it would have worked correctly if the previous flooring was laminate even with my old carpet and I was installing ON TOP of the laminate. (thus making the new surface higher).. But it seems to me the more common situation is to remove the old stuff (I had carpet in the room previously). Once installed the carpet is nearly the same level as the tile.. What Edge should do is have a door strip for each circumstance. I would have preferred to have the edge strip snap down over the edge of the carpet to hold it in place.

Grout. Wow.. This needs to really be a message all in itself. How bad is this stuff?

30 Sq Ft per can?!?! Anyone get that? I managed to get 19 Sq Feet for the first THREE cans.. Although, here’s a tip if you are insistent on using Edge flooring.. The Lowes had 2 types of cans.. I only assume now that one is maybe a newer design? The first set of cans I had had a white tip. The ones with the white tip came out way to quick at first. Sputtered in the middle, and then nearly quit working. I returned all of those and got the ones with the green tips on them, and the grout appears to come out a little more consistent. I haven’t completed the install yet so I’m not sure if this is what I will find with all the green tipped cans.

All in all with the project complete, it took me 14 cans to fill 88 Sq Ft of tile.. ($140 worth of grout) although alot of the cans I returned for a refund because only half the grout would come out. This is probably not typical because I had alot of corners and edges that needed to be filled. If the room had been 9x10 it would not have been nearly as bad.

Then there is the issue with the grout sinking into the crack. What’s going on with that? It looks like I’ll need to cover the entire floor twice with grout.. I’ll say that grouting with real tiles is a WHOLE LOT easier.. I could grout a whole floor with real grout in fraction of the time, and I’m just a home do-it-yourselfer.

I also want to mention that the Lowes I had originally purchased the tile was $34.50 per case ($3.40 per sq ft). But when I went to another to pick up an extra case they had it at $29.50 per case ($2.90 per sq ft). The first one refunded me the difference.. but thought that was weird as the less expensive Lowes didn’t have it on sale or clearance.. it was just their normal price.

-Zippyfear.
 
#4 ·
Edge Flooring

I sale Edge flooring, and have come to this conclusion.

Edge flooring is a awsome product. It should not be attempted by those who can only install peal and stick vinyl sqares.(if you know what i mean) I have people who have no problem with this prodct then i have people who can not figure it out. This is a great item if you know what your doing. Beside its a brand new company with an idea we all wish we would have thought of.
 
#5 ·
lowes#1fan said:
I sale Edge flooring, and have come to this conclusion.

Edge flooring is a awsome product. It should not be attempted by those who can only install peal and stick vinyl sqares.(if you know what i mean) I have people who have no problem with this prodct then i have people who can not figure it out. This is a great item if you know what your doing. Beside its a brand new company with an idea we all wish we would have thought of.
It's a new product that the company released before it was properly tested. There are countless problems to be found on the internet with this stuff. C'mon, a floating ceramic tile? Lowe's, at least the ones I've spoken to, have quit selling this stuff installed. What's that tell ya? They don't want the problems either.

You're not the district rep are you?

skeptical,
Don
 
#8 ·
We installed Edge this weekend

wingam00 said:
From talking with the flooring guys at my Lowes, they report a lot of problems with this type flooring. A good idea but just does not work like planned. The gouting is the biggest complain. I would stay away for this flooring product.
We bought the tiles last week and at that time, Lowes was pulling some of their tiles off the shelf and returning to the vendor due to the cracking, etc. However, the tiles we bought are supposedly ok.

We found the circular saw worked just fine, but the jigsaw blade left something to be desired. We stripped it the first time we cut a sharp curve. However, Lowes took the whole set back without argument and replaced it. We tiled an approx 200 sq ft kitchen, and nothing cracked while we were cutting or laying the tile.

Using the product was harder than it looked, but nothing I wouldn't put down to inexperience. The grout definitely doesn't go as far as claimed.

In any case, so far so good. I guess the test will be when we put the appliances back on the floor. If anything untoward happens, I will repost.
 
#43 ·
How is it going with your edge tiles? please help . I was about to install them in the kitchen. m.semaan@comcast.net

We bought the tiles last week and at that time, Lowes was pulling some of their tiles off the shelf and returning to the vendor due to the cracking, etc. However, the tiles we bought are supposedly ok.

We found the circular saw worked just fine, but the jigsaw blade left something to be desired. We stripped it the first time we cut a sharp curve. However, Lowes took the whole set back without argument and replaced it. We tiled an approx 200 sq ft kitchen, and nothing cracked while we were cutting or laying the tile.

Using the product was harder than it looked, but nothing I wouldn't put down to inexperience. The grout definitely doesn't go as far as claimed.

In any case, so far so good. I guess the test will be when we put the appliances back on the floor. If anything untoward happens, I will repost.
 
#9 · (Edited)
Have you put the refridgerator or stove back in your 200 SF kitchen yet? If not, I wish you luck when you do. You may want to put down some 3/4 plywood so the tiles will only crack under the appliances(hopefully). Damn that sounds condescending, but it's not meant to be, I truly do wish you luck. I've never used Edge myself, but I did read about 50 or so pages on John Bridge on the subject and I would guess that 99.9% of the comments made were....ummm.....negative, to say the least. I saw more than once..."DON'T USE EDGE FLOOR TILE...CRACKS...CRACKS...CRACKS". In fact I think that's the name of that thread, "DON'T USE EDGE FLOOR TILE".

At any rate, good luck with yours.

:eek: I stopped reading your post too early, I see now that you haven't put the app. back in yet. Let us know how it goes, good or bad.
 
#10 ·
Edge Floor Tile - JUNK!!!!

I installed this product in Aug 2004. I have a lot of construction experience and knew what I was doing. I chose it because of the minimal shift in floor elevation that it creates. My floor had the appropriate thickness and levelness. The tiles themselves are relatively simple to install in a perfectly square room. Most of us don't have rooms like that. Regardless, the process isn't that bad. The grout has been covered many times. It flows too fast, doesn't get near the advertised coverage and leaves a nasty stick residue that has to be scrubbed up tile by tile. Over the last year I have replace 60% of the tile from cracking. I take the broken tiles and load them in an original box and return them, always no questions asked. Lowes knows the product is crap.

If you have made the mistake of installing this floor, I'd recommend changing tiles in batches because the replacement techique requires that you cut the tounge and groove off of one side and even if you get a tight fit, that tile will still bounce up and down making it more suceptible to cracking and it damages the pseudo grout. When batch changing, you reduce the number of tiles that need the tounge and groove cut off, although the wife isn't happy when you rip out half of the floor and you will have the additional cost and headache of regrouting. But the flooring is more stable this way.

Installing this product was a monumental mistake. CRACK CRACK CRACK.
 
#11 ·
My wife and I bought the Edge Precision Tiles on clearance at Lowes at $2.43 per box and were excited to put it in our kitchen. Then I started reading all the posts online about how terrible it was and how much it cracks. I am thinking about returning the tiles before I spend a bunch of money on their underlayment and grout and then have the tiles crack. However, I had a couple questions first. Is the underlayment really necessary, or could we just put the tiles on the concrete subfloor? Also, has anyone tried using regular grout with these tiles or would it be bad because of the backerboard? As you can see, I'm trying to find a way to install this tile without spending a lot of money on their other products so if it does crack we would only waste our time installing it. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Animaldoc
 
#13 ·
Edge gave me a full refund for my for my floor with zero hassle and admitted that the original product was severely flawed.. All I had to do was provide the receipt. They claim to have redesigned the product for greater reliability. Unfortunately I had the task of ripping it out, but at least I got my money back minus my personal labor costs. My local Lowes said that they threw all stock of the old tile in the dumpster at the direction of Edge. I could never recommend this product.
 
#22 ·
I am looking for help with the warranty issue

I contacted Edge and they gave me the run around. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks


Edge gave me a full refund for my for my floor with zero hassle and admitted that the original product was severely flawed.. All I had to do was provide the receipt. They claim to have redesigned the product for greater reliability. Unfortunately I had the task of ripping it out, but at least I got my money back minus my personal labor costs. My local Lowes said that they threw all stock of the old tile in the dumpster at the direction of Edge. I could never recommend this product.
 
#14 ·
Edge Precision

DevilDog,
We saw your post on Edge Precision, and we need some info. We installed 4 bathrooms and 1 kitchen for our company. We have receipts, all are cracking and need re-done. I took my reciepts to Edge Precison, they are willing to give us more tile, not to give us our money back. Can you tell us who you contacted to get your money back? We are already going to loose about 3000.00 in labor to pull up all these jobs and reinstall them, not to mention the material costs we are incurring.
We are about suicidal over this...please let us know how you were able to get some monetary compensation..
Thank You,
Rick-The HandyMan
 
#15 ·
It's no longer available, thank god, they pulled it off the market and sold what they had left to a big box discount store, should have just tossed it in the garbage out back.:wallbash:

I would rip it all up and place it in carts and roll it up to the return desk with your reciept and demand a refund, seeing they can't replace it anyway.:thumbup:
 
#16 ·
oh oh, I may have just screwed up

I was at Lowes yesterday and I thought I made a great "snap" purchase. They were closing out a bunch of Edge flooring. I purchased 1000 Sq ft. of it for $100 - a dollar a box. Got the underlayment for a buck a roll, and the grout for $0.37 a can. (All the rest of what they were selling was gone in about 10 minutes.)

I was going to use it in my apartment above my garage that I am in the process of building.

But, after reading this thread I am considering not using it. Has anyone had a good experience with the stuff? The stuff cost me less that $200.
 
#44 ·
What did you end up doing? I purchased a lot of the stuff too.
Thanks

I was at Lowes yesterday and I thought I made a great "snap" purchase. They were closing out a bunch of Edge flooring. I purchased 1000 Sq ft. of it for $100 - a dollar a box. Got the underlayment for a buck a roll, and the grout for $0.37 a can. (All the rest of what they were selling was gone in about 10 minutes.)

I was going to use it in my apartment above my garage that I am in the process of building.

But, after reading this thread I am considering not using it. Has anyone had a good experience with the stuff? The stuff cost me less that $200.
 
#19 ·
Need advise on Edge Tile

I bought Edge Tile on clearance at Lowes. They told me it had issues but at the price and and my inexperience, i thought it would be easier to install. I have a 3x4 Front door entry area that I was going to put this tile down and a 5x8 back door area that I was going to do the same. The back door area will require some cutting of the tile.

I have never installed tile before, and I am optimistic most of the time and think I can do anything.

I have spent $90 on the materials

Am I stupid to try to install and use this tile? Should I just put linolium in these areas?

This is for a rental house that I am redoing with new carpet and linoleum and after that I am putting the house up for sale.

If I trash all the materials and don't use this tile, can I make a diamond ring out of the saw blade?
 
#20 ·
so far so good

I guess I am one of the few that might have a good word for this product. In a summary: do not follow the installation instructions, do not use the underlayment and you should be fine. I have a relatively small kitchen (approx 120 sq ft. floor). I put the tiles with my wife approx 3 weeks ago, moved a huge whirlpool refr. (and we were not very gentle) and so far nothing cracked. My 2 cents: do not put anything between the floor's plywood (I assume that is what you have) and the tiles. Make sure the floor is not wobbly. If the floor makes noises try to fix it. Do not be pedantic, just do your best. 1 hr shoould be enough to prepare the floor. GLUE the tiles to the floor!!! Use for example underlayment glue (Liquid Nails make such a glue, others as well). Put enough of it on the tile, put in place and leave for at least 4-5 hours (but best 24 hrs). There should not be any moving tiles- if there are you can try to drill holes between the tiles and fill them with expanding wood glue (Bull, Gorilla, etc.). This worked great for me. The grout is hard to put, but is somewhat flexible, so it will not crack when floor moves (and if you do not have concrete it will move). Overall I think this is a great product, but the way it is prtrayed is completely inadequate.
BTW, I am buying these tiles for 30 USD if you still have them if you pay the transport. And if you use my technique and you succeed you owe me 17 bucks as well :).
Oh and the underlayment is great, but not for tiles- I already used mine and I am buying if you are selling:laughing:. What discount store got those tiles you were saying ?:yes:
 
#69 ·
I guess I am one of the few that might have a good word for this product. In a summary: do not follow the installation instructions, do not use the underlayment and you should be fine. I have a relatively small kitchen (approx 120 sq ft. floor). I put the tiles with my wife approx 3 weeks ago, moved a huge whirlpool refr. (and we were not very gentle) and so far nothing cracked. My 2 cents: do not put anything between the floor's plywood (I assume that is what you have) and the tiles. Make sure the floor is not wobbly. If the floor makes noises try to fix it. Do not be pedantic, just do your best. 1 hr shoould be enough to prepare the floor. GLUE the tiles to the floor!!! Use for example underlayment glue (Liquid Nails make such a glue, others as well). Put enough of it on the tile, put in place and leave for at least 4-5 hours (but best 24 hrs). There should not be any moving tiles- if there are you can try to drill holes between the tiles and fill them with expanding wood glue (Bull, Gorilla, etc.). This worked great for me. The grout is hard to put, but is somewhat flexible, so it will not crack when floor moves (and if you do not have concrete it will move). Overall I think this is a great product, but the way it is prtrayed is completely inadequate.
BTW, I am buying these tiles for 30 USD if you still have them if you pay the transport. And if you use my technique and you succeed you owe me 17 bucks as well :).
Oh and the underlayment is great, but not for tiles- I already used mine and I am buying if you are selling:laughing:. What discount store got those tiles you were saying ?:yes:
Is the Precision edge flooring still working out for you? If so, do you have any other special tips about it?
 
#24 ·
Edge flooring Warranty

I just called the lowes in our area and spoke to the flooring manager. They told me that if I purchased the flooring before April 2005, that there was a pretty good chance for a refund. The company had supposedly improved the product after that date. As was mentioned before, Lowes no longer carries the product. The manager told me that if I can find the receipts (which I have), they will fight for me and that I had a pretty good chance of getting a refund. I installed my flooring in my kitchen in Aug 2004 and it is cracking all over the place. The grout is also cracking.

I will post the my experience with Lowes. Hopefully, they will come through.

By the way, thanks for all of your postings. I thought I had done something wrong during installation but it appears I have not.
 
#26 ·
Good luck with Edge. Our experience was horrible. We bought enough boxes to do our kitchen, dining room, and bathroom along with all the grout, underlayment, blades, and spacers-over $1,000! We followed the directions carefully. It wasn't one week before CRACK CRACK CRACK and every day since new cracks. Some tiles are so bad they are starting to crumble. Right now almost half of all the tiles have cracks in them. So we get ahold of Edge. We emailed our receipt for everything but the saw blade. We bought that a day or two later but didn't think to save that one. The customer service rep said we HAD to have this receipt. I scanned and emailed a pic of the saw blade. I said that I would mail her the actual blade so they could see the wear and tear on it if they wanted. Not good enough for them. They also had us dig out a whole, uncut, uncracked tile and mail it to them. (This costs about $20 by the way due to the special packing necessary.). They said they would test it. They never got back to us until we went back to Lowes and starting complaining. (Lowes had been trying to find the saw blade purchase in their records and the manager called Edge to find out if this was ABSOLUTELY as necessary as we had been told.) Then they called us (the same day) and said the tile had passed all their tests-meaning there was nothing wrong with our tiles. I asked how our floor could be so cracked and what about the 25 year warranty? Well, the warranty says if it passes their test, then you are screwed basically. As far as the cracks, who knows why they are there? This customer service rep kept trying to trip me up-did you install cabinets over it? an island? appliances? (???) how did you find out if your floor was level? (we used a level-duh). In the meantime she is carrying on a conversation with someone else in the midst of our conversation with no "if you please" or "excuse me" in sight. (The Lowes manager later told me she did the same thing to him. Great customer service, eh?) I asked several times to speak with her supervisor and kept getting a real runaround-"There's just two of us in this department". Finally I said do you have a supervisor, yes or no. But the supervisor was no help. She said the cracks were probably caused by "environmental reasons" in our home but she couldn't give me any example of what this meant. (I had already been told that there was no water damage noted in the test. My home is pretty normal-temperature, humidity, and who knows?) I invited them to come to my home and check it out but of course they refused. One thing is -gasp- we have a frige in our kitchen. CRACK CRACK CRACK. In the powder room, there was nothing besides people on it. (They tried to trip me up with Is there a vanity? A pedestal sink? No and no.) Crack. Crack. Oh yeah. If you don't know if all your tile came from the same lot, the warranty is void too. So I hope you saved all your boxes for proof. Most of ours had already been dumped- who saves all the boxes??? Tiles from different lots may not be compatible with each other so can cause cracking (I was informed). So I didn't have proof of this either-void the warranty. This warranty is so full of loopholes, I could strain my spaghetti in it. THEN they tried to blame it all on Lowes. They packed their palletes too high and reboxed and sold damaged material. I-gasp- had bought some things on clearance! The customer service rep implied that this meant I intentionally had gone out to buy substandard material. Lowes, by the way, doesn't carry their product any more so this is probably why this woman began listing all the stores within a 100 mile radius that carries their product like I'd want to buy more of that crap. Good luck
 
#27 ·
No Edge

Oh yeah. I asked what kind of tests were run on my tile, what the range of the tests were, and how my tile fell within their parameters. Wanna guess what the answer was? They wouldn't give me ANY information concerning the tests. What reputable company using reputable tests would refuse to give this information? Isn't that ridiculous? Do you think they even ran any tests? :censored:
 
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