Torn Between Two Covers

Floor Covers...  OK, Floor Coverings.  Schmaltzy, but close enough.  ;-)

This was the sheet vinyl pattern that was the best.
Great colors for our room, but too busy and 'demanding.'

A couple of helpful people recommended I look at the floor tiles that look similar to ceramic, but are vinyl, and can be installed with or without grout... Which I did.

I wasn't sure about dealing with groutlines for the next few decades, but the bigger reason I had to X-out this option was the patterns.  These seem, like the sheet vinyl I considered, to come only in faux stone designs.  The style on one that had the best colors for us was referred to as "Tuscan," which my kitchen is really not.  The stone-looks tend to have more contrast, with splotches of white, which looks busy in our room.

During one visit to the flooring store, while I was collecting samples to bring home to look at in the kitchen, a particular piece of luxury vinyl planks kept catching my eye.  I, in turn, kept eliminating it, because I just knew Hubby would immediately reject it.  But it was a nice gray, what I thought would be the perfect shade in our kitchen... And it had a nice, authentic look to it. In the end I grabbed it, and figured there was no harm in taking it home for a day...

To my extreme surprise, my woodworker, wood-obsessed Hubby had no objections to the 'faux' oak flooring, even though it would meet our real, hardwood floors in 2 places.  The family much preferred its look to the ceramic tile and other vinyl patterns I'd brought home.  That sent me back to look at other brands of similar flooring in the wood look.  Plus, this sample came from a line the salesman hadn't thought to recommend to me, and I wondered if there was a reason why.

That reason was that the DevineLock flooring I'd been drawn to was a new product, and he didn't know of an installation they'd done with it.  But, he explained, it was essentially the same type of flooring as the brand he'd recommended, so he has no reason to believe it won't be good.  Still, I decided to look more at Invincible, the brand they'd had plentiful experience with, and brought home their grayest offering.

It's actually a golden brownish with a grayish tint and some grayish streaks.  Mostly, it's brown... Almost the look of bare, slightly aged wood.  In the store it looked pretty yellow, but thankfully, not so much in our house.  

My family is torn.  Not that everyone likes both, but that half the family seems to decidedly like the gray, and the other half like the brown.  I love both, and would have been happy with either, had I seen only one or the other.  But now that I've seen both, I'm stuck.

The gray is the safest.  It's nearly the same color as the Marmoleum Click we have, but barely lighter, which is a good thing.  It's the lesser known brand, and Hubby feels like it looks a little too much like old, white-washed oak, of which he was never a fan.  I think it looks stained light gray, so that's not as much of a worry to me.  

The brown is new and interesting.  The color intrigues me. But is that a reason to switch?  I have made the mistake of choosing 'new' over a 'known success' before, with disappointing results.  Should I stick to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" strategy?  

I had originally wanted a wood-toned flooring, but the Marmoleum Click didn't offer any browns, so I settled for gray.  But now I can't remember if I just decided gray would fit in my other choices 'OK,' or if I made other selections after having the gray flooring in mind.  So I'm not altogether sure that brown floors will 'fit' now.  

Some of its detractors here say that with the Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba), and all our Douglas fir in cabinets and millwork, that we don't need another wood color.  

This is the gray.  I don't know why it
looks yellowish here, when not in real life

The brown selection really connects with the stone behind the stove.  The gray connects with the stove cabinets... maybe a little too closely, and is a different gray than the laminate countertops. (It's also presently different than the stove-cabinets' gray, but I think I've found creamy gray paint the color I'd originally intended for those, and will repaint.)  











I like the interplay of the goldish tones of the wood color with the burgundy cabinets.  (Please ignore the still unpainted drawer!)


I think, though, that the almost bare wood look is a little rustic, and I'm not sure that fits the rest of the house.  The gray is a little more sophisticated, while still casual and comfy.





I'll let you know whenever I decide something!

These Floors are Made for Walkin'

To replace the Marmoleum Click flooring in our kitchen, we want to make sure it's right for us in a few important ways.  These include...

Durability:  I didn't really mind too much that the Marmoleum scratched and scuffed, as any of these problems hid well in the pattern, and suited the old-fashioned essence of linoleum.  But I sometimes wondered how its "patina" might look in 5 more years.  As long as we're starting over, I hope to have something a little tougher and less prone to minor damage by normal busy-family wear. 

Significant Water Resistance:  I want to know that if we have another minor leak, another unseen spill, or if we want to give the pets water indoors, that it means simply wiping up a mess and not replacing flooring.  

Reasonable Affordability:  Since the Marmoleum flooring extends from the kitchen to our back door, and covers the sewing room, too, it totals over 1200 square feet.  Any dollar amount multiplied by 1200 is a lot of money!  There is also the question of installation... Is it DIYable?  With Hubby's limited time, we'll also be weighing costs of having it installed.

Comfort and Appearance:  I've liked how the Marmoleum feels to walk on, and the cork on the underside makes it friendly to feet, legs, and backs.  Of course, the flooring should also suit the decor, style, and quality of the kitchen and our home.  Especially in the kitchen, which has a lot of things going on already in colors and textures, the floor needs to be pretty, but also pretty (visually) quiet.  --A background that's an integral piece of the whole room design, but not a scene stealer.

Upon visiting our local flooring store, we immediately eliminated any with wood fiber core, as the Marmoleum Click has... The part that swelled when exposed to water.

The salesman and I narrowed to 3 options, each with their own pros and cons.

Based on these pros and cons, I am strongly leaning toward vinyl tile planks, and am having trouble choosing between 2 of them.  I'm actually surprised by one aspect of my choices.  I'll show you those in the next post.... and opinions will be welcome!  :-)

Having the Marmoleum Pulled Out from Under Me

As it went in.  It's quite DIY friendly.   Ours was
mostly installed by, then 18 year old, Stoic,
and his 12 year old helper, Inventive

Issue #1:  The salesman warned me that I couldn't put the dog's water dish on our Marmoleum Click kitchen floor.  But I did it anyway.  I wasn't totally stupid about it, I didn't think, because I put a larger baking pan underneath to catch the slops. 

I have loved the retro look and soft sheen.  The pattern has
interest, but doesn't demand attention.
It's been comfortable to walk on, and is fairly easy to clean.
I'm OK with a bit of 'patina,' as this scratches & scuffs a bit,
but I don't think it ruins the look.

Unfortunately, at some point, moisture got underneath and condensed on the metal pan, keeping the floor damp, and expanding the seam just a bit.  Not noticeable by anyone but Hubby and me, so no biggie.  We moved on and moved the water dish outside.

Issue #2:  Princess Sassy and Prince Steadfast's puppy, Henry, liked to chew.  He especially liked to play with and chew water bottles.  Empty or full, they were tremendous fun to him, either rolling or crackling.  We stored the extra cases of water from the wedding receptions under my little desk.  From an open end of a partial case, he would occasionally get hold of a bottle, chase it around the house, and grab it in his mouth.
  Eventually, it would break open and we'd have a frustrating, but harmless, puddle to clean up.  (It was better than his other puddles!)

He made his way through that partial case of bottles and it was the end of the problem.  
We thought.  
Until we found that he'd tried to get into the remaining, sealed case, biting through one of the bottles, which leaked a lake trapped under the box.  (We'd underestimated how tenacious he could be.) We discovered that when the flooring started to swell in front of the desk and across the doorway between the back hall and entry.  It wasn't a large hill, just a bubbled up spot that was springy as we stepped from one area to the other.  Over time, it dried and shrunk.  Not completely back into place, but it was ignorable.

Wetness on the underside of the flooring planks

Issue #3, AKA: The Last Straw:  One morning in September the floor in front of our main sink seemed a little springy.  Day-by-day, the springiness grew along with the height of the floor.  The mountain of flooring got high enough that we were tripping over it.  (Being an incompetent blogger, I neglected to take it's picture for sharing.)  The flooring in that spot was obviously ruined, and I pulled it up to find that it was quite wet underneath, the wettest place situated between the sink cabinet and the dishwasher to its right.  We, of course, quit using the dishwasher, which caused a whole 'nother set of aggravations in a household that produces a LOT of dirty dishes.

You can see the water stains on the pad.
This messy-looking exposure only got worse,
as it's tough to not have flooring in the messiest part of the room

Hubby said we need to replace the flooring.  Of course, we 'abused' the Marmoleum Click in a way that no wood-fiber-cored material could handle.  It wasn't technically the flooring's fault.  But they were just things that happen in a busy household and kitchen, and we need a floor that can take it.  We have kids, dogs, 2 dishwashers, and a set of laundry equipment all sitting on that flooring.  It's very likely it'll face water again... Besides, replacing a section of click-together floor means tearing it out to an edge and replacing a large section.  We probably don't have enough flooring on hand, and they don't make our color any more.

We seem to have 3 options for replacement to consider.  I'll leave that discussion for another post.

By the way, like our van's mysterious metally-scraping sound that disappeared as soon as it was in front of the mechanic, the dishwasher, when pulled out as far as we could while still being hooked up, so we could watch it while running, refused to leak.  --Unless it's underneath or behind, where we still can't see it.  Before we replace the floor, we have to pull it out all the way, so that's when we'll do more sleuthing about that.