Ideas for damaged kitchen vinyl flooring?

I just brought a new vinyl flooring for my kitchen floor. The no glue needed kind from lowes. A indian slate kind by armstrong. Beautiful! Unfortunatly, within the 2 weeks after installing it on the floor. I was vaccuming the vent in my kitchen with the hose and didnt think about the brush under the vaccum running, no way to turn that off. When I moved my vaccum cleaner. The cleaner brushed up on my floor and burned it and ate some some of the vinyl looks like a large white comb. Any ideas with paints or etc to fix? My husband refuses to cut that piece out cuz it would be a problem later on in that area. Any ideas?

Public Comments

1. Sharpies and paste wax!!! How to do it - go to the office supply store. Find the sharpies that come as a pack of 30 colors or so. You should find grey and brown, etc. Get those. Then go to Lowes and get paste floor wax. Taking a piece of leftover vinyl (I hope you saved some), scuff it up like the one you are going to fix. Then, play with the sharpies, dabbing color into the damaged areas until you have a feel for how the vinyl will take the color. You might use a combination of grey, brown and black. Play around with your technique until you are satisfied it looks right. Then practice smooshing a tiny bit of paste wax into the scuff and polishing by hand with a 100% cotton cloth (like an old t-shirt). Test your "repair" by placing it next to the actual damage. Does it pass? Once you feel satisfied, go to work on the real deal. ->OR<- If you really want to cheat - Get some grey shoe polish and buff it into the marks, then polish with a cloth. You will probably have to repeat this every few months, though. Good luck!!!
2. Use some spare bits for experimenting and practice. Try to reproduce the damage.y I would try using a soldering iron (with a clean, flat tip) to push the colored bits into the grooves and sort of smooth the area. Use a light touch. Another smoother might be a large spoon, heated lightly with a blowtorch, held with a glove. Armstrong might have a solution, or vinyl stain powders to apply with heat, that match the flooring. Did you talk with the store disaster recovery team? They might even talk warranty.
3. your best bet is to go ahead and patch it..... if it has a grout line like most do it will look o.k.... but i would let the pro's do it.....they will take a framing square and take the extra vinyl you have and double cut it into place and then glue it in. With the proper seam sealer You should have no trouble with it coming up and if the guys are good you should not even notice it...... after all its a new rug so you don't want it to look bad after a couple weeks......$50.00 service call and 1 hour worth of work is all it should take.......
4. Can't help you with the vinyl question, but would love to know what brand vacuum is that powerful.
5. If the flooring is the "no glue required' kind then it comes in squares,right? If so, you can pull those tiles up and replace them, no long term affects will come with such new installation. If its the whole vinyl, I kind of think the sharpie idea is good!