Where This Project Started

When managing a commercial facility, upgrading your flooring often comes with a major headache: how do you get the work done without stopping business operations?

In 2015, the Cass County Electric Cooperative in Valley City, North Dakota, faced exactly this challenge. Their old, glue-down carpet had reached the end of its lifespan, and they needed a durable, low-maintenance flooring solution that wouldn’t pull their team away from serving the community.

LaValle Flooring stepped in to execute a seamless, full-service commercial conversion to Vinyl Composition Tile (VCT)—all without costing the cooperative a single hour of business operations.

Replacing an old glue-down commercial carpet isn’t as simple as pulling up the old fabric and laying down new tile. The real work happens beneath the surface.

After tearing away the old carpet, the team was left with layers of hardened, uneven old adhesive bonded directly to the structural concrete. If you install new tile directly over an un-prepped surface like that, every single bump, ridge, and imperfection will “telegraph” or show right through the final floor, causing premature wear and a messy look.

To solve this, our crew meticulously scraped away the old adhesive residue. Next, we applied a high-performance skim coat of Ardex Feather Finish self-drying cement-based underlayment over the entire concrete subfloor. This critical step fills in minor gouges and creates a perfectly level, mirror-smooth foundation engineered to handle heavy commercial foot traffic.