More on floors

While Craig is busy working on our floors (I think he is finding the task a bit more time consuming that originally expected, I think he has bad floor mojo or something), I thought I would talk a bit more about our choice. Mostly because it ends with me winning and that is always nice :-)

When we started planning the kitchen, we were going to replace the wall with a penisula. This meant the kitchen floor and the dining room floors could be different without being a visual nightmare and our floor options were wide open. Looking at my idea files and listening to my heart, I knew that wood was what I really wanted but I had heard some negative things about wood floors in kitchens so I attempted to listen to Craig's reasonings about other options.

We both liked slate. When my brother got married last fall, the house we all stayed in has slate kitchen floors and we liked the look but it seemed a bit too modern for the rest of the house. Plus, the sealing sounded like a pain.

I didn't really want tile. I love how easy to clean it us but I'm really clumsy and if you drop stuff on tile, it breaks. And my feet get cold easily. Yes, that really was one of the reasons I didn't want tile :-)

Cork. This is a pretty controversial in the world of kitchen floors. Some people think this is the bees knees because its soft, quiet and water and bacteria resistant, and other people think is will soon be outdated and is just not durable enough for a kitchen floor. I originally looked into it because it sounded cool but most of the pros/cons are similar to hard wood so why would I want to get something similar but not matching. The answer, I wouldn't.

Linoleum (the real stuff, not to be confused with vinyl - yuck) I think this was Craig's favorite for a while and I really wanted to agree with him. It's made from natural materials so its eco-friendly and fairly low in toxicity/offgassing compared to a lot of other flooring options. It does need to be polished occasionally to keep its protective coating but it seemed like it would be a good fit. I was trying really hard to sell this idea to myself, thinking it would be cool if we could keep the black and white checkered floor look which I am fond of as long as it is not off-white and black with missing patches like the old one was.

But right when I had almost convinced myself that I would settle for linoleum, we changed the floor plan from this

to this which means the old floor would meet the new one right in the middle of the fridge. That would be weird and really mess up the casual eat in kitchen look. Which is sad for poor rejected linoleum, but happy for me and my beloved wood floor option.

And I'm not really worried about the wood in the kitchen naysayers. Yes, I'll have to be careful about quickly cleaning up spills but the very reasons people don't like wood in the kitchen is the reason I do. It's quiet and soft on your feet. It's easy to clean and easy to know that it is clean (I have to sweep our living room at least once a day to keep it clean but unlike carpet, I know that it is clean once I'm finished!)

 And we'll be using a polyurethane coat so I'm not to worried about scratches or dents. Lucy is rough on our living room floor with her love of pushing furniture around but so far, nothing. And we don't wear shoes in the house so even if I suddenly develop a love of high heels (don't hold your breath), I think it will be just fine.

Of course, if we have a water pipe burst or a dishwasher leak sometime next year, I'm giving you permission to hold this conversation over my head. Just be gentle okay?