I'd echo what Tester101 is saying. Going with vinyl vs cermaic is really a question of the style and price of home in relation to others in the area. Whether the price of the house is dramatically affected by this decision is hard to tell.
Does it match the rest of the house? For example, if your bathroom has a walk-in glass shower that's done in granite tile, granite counter tops, and a $600 vanity, then yes, using vinyl tile will make the whole thing look cheap. If your bathroom is more modest, then you can get away with these tiles.
Houses in a given area typically sell in a certain range. If you put several thousand dollars into high-end everything then you'll probably be able to sell at the top of that range, but no one is going to pay $350k for a house in a neighbourhood where all the houses are $220 to 260k.
That said, the straight-up price difference to DIY is not that much. I actually just installed these exact vinyl tiles in my bathroom. I went with them for a couple reasons:
- I don't really like cold tiles, and so factoring in a in-floor heating ups the cost
- My house does not have a lot of high-end finishes, and is not worth enough overall that I'd get a return on investment from this.
- To put in tiles, I'd have to significantly beef up the subfloor, and I didn't want to put that much money or time in.
- I have not tiled before, and was trying to complete this project in a weekend while the wife was gone as it's our only shower and she was not thrilled at not having a shower.
Overall I'm pretty happy with them. They do take some playing with to get them perfect (especially if your walls aren't perfectly square, like mine) - the first row is critical. I messed mine up a little bit, and there's a very slight crack between them, but it's not too bad.
I also noticed that the "grout" lines on the edges are not perfectly uniform. Some are skinnier than others. I unfortunately ended up with two planks with skinny edges butted against each other, next to two with thick edges. It's subtle, but it's the sort of thing that once you see it, you can't un-see it. If I used them again, I would take a whole bunch out of the box, and lay them out before hand to make sure the edges are balanced.
I am happy with the way they turned out. It's about equivalent to a normal vinyl sheet floor. It's not even comparable to the old peel-and-stick tiles. I definitely noticed in the store that there are some that don't look that nice, and if you do a bad job at installation for sure they won't look good. My first try at it, I had the first row misaligned and so by the time I was just a few planks in, it was horribly offset. I had to go back and redo it all (which luckily, you can do).
Here's part-way through the installation, to give you an idea of how they go down:
I agree with Steven about Dricore. I have used it and it is terrific for
- creating a moisture barrier
- giving a slightly softer feel underfoot than concrete
- serving as a great subfloor for almost any type of surface
However, I would seal the floor first (which I did) with a wateproofing product like Drylok.
One caution - do not seal the floor under a water pressure tank or filter system that sweats in the summer. Condensation from these systems often drip down and dissipate through raw concrete, but will pool if you seal it.
Keep the dehumidifier going. The moisture is still in the soil surrounding the foundation and will probably still percolate through the walls.
Best Answer
The problem is the small voids below the tiles, if it was flat this would not be a problem a roller will do the same as walking on it, possibly heating with a heat gun may help but it may damage them as they actually need to melt a bit to drop down , if you want a pro job with no noise or problems the tiles will need to be removed and a leveling compound added, if it has not been long and you can get the same tiles you may be able to remove the bad areas , level and replace with new tiles, I was able to repair a large basement with a few areas that had problems because the owner had an extra box of the same type, I leveled the areas that had problems , applied the new tiles and it looked funny 4 areas that were lighter, I actually added some dirt and scrubbed it and the color was much better match. , if you don’t have some extra you may be able to get a close match and blend them in with some “dirty scrubbing” . Years back I used to think those tiles were a waste but if properly applied I have found them to hold up quite well in dry areas. If the noise bothers you or a few tiles come up try leveling then if needed a dirty scrubb.