Kitchen remodeling question: What is a good material for kitchen floor?

linoleum?
tile?
vinyl?
laminate?

I am a total novice in this...what has been your experience, good or bad?

Vinyl is very popular because it is easily cleaned and seamless.

Be sure the subfloor is structurally sound.

But I live in a warm climate , where we appreciate all the "cool" we can get..
Mexican tile..(we used grey mortar for contrast )

and it keeps the patio cool with the ceiling fans.

I love saltillo, but hubby didn't care for it.

I love it; it's easy to clean and it looks terrific. Also, it "feels" cooler, an important consideration in Phoenix (it's 102 today, btw). To clean it, all we do is sweep it and mop it with vinegar water; then go out for Indian buffet. When we get back, it's dry!

Please note: the lunch is absolutely necessary for the cleaning process! :evilgrin:

The 12" ones look kind of big. I thought of doing tile in the bathroom, just to see how hard it was to do.

on edit: and what about the grout? how do you keep it from getting yucky? Is there a grout sealer you can use?

they are actually easy to keep clean..

We used a pour on sealer and re-apply as needed..


We used grey mortar :evilgrin:...Hides a multitude of sins :)


Our tile guy turned out to be less than reliable, so I actually finished the job.. It's EASY :)

the most durable but if you are going to stand on it a long time it can be hard on your back. Also in a decade whatever you pick may be out of style, so go neutral. Another disadvantage to tile is if you drop something glass it will shatter. If you are a detail oriented person you can install it yourself and save a ton.

Linoleumis good but it will need to be replaced before you are ready to think of it as old. Even the good ones don’t have a super long life.

My favorite is solid wood. Get a solid wood and not a veneer so it can be refinished when the time comes. Many of the veneers can not be refinished, so solid is worth the extra cost. There are finishes that are fairly easy to maintain, they are nothing like they were a generation ago in terms of care.

I love an oak or maple floor in the kitchen.

The real stuff, can be refinished..Down side is possible serious water damage. Must have excellent plumbing.

180

and yes I am aware of heating underlays..

if you go with tile just don`t drop anything that will break. and make sure you get a good installer.

congoleum, we like it.

I'm becoming a plastiphobe...

are natural, and durable, and "green"

And it grows quickly so it's a renewable source.

And there are dealers here in So. Cal. so I will definitely check it out!

I'm not just a plastiphobe; I'm becoming petrophobic to boot.

but... with cats, my sister (a flooring specialist) said that's a bad idea. Cats have "accidents" and it can seep into the spaces and cause all kinds of damage. She recommended a good qualilty vinyl that looks like tile.

I'm still thinking about it. I don't want the carpet because of the cats and the allergies.

Little shits do it deliberately...:-)

I've lived with linoleum and vinyl both - linoleum looks like hell after a while and turns color. Vinyl is just, ewww, crappy, plus every time I dropped a knife (I was younger then), it stuck in the vinyl and left a hole.

Of coruse with tile, almost every time you drop something glass or ceramic, it will shatter. Sadly, it won't just crack - look forward to an actual shattering. I lucked out once with mom's tile floor - dropped one of her goblets (I was like 27 then) and by gum, it landed just right on the bottom rim that it bounced a few times and didn't break. Everything else I ever dropped, though, was like punching safety glass, except without the cohesiveness opf safety glass.

Also about tile - be forewarned that when wet, it can be really slippery. We used to slide around at the restaurant I worked at after the floor was mopped. Hilarious! And if you get grease on the tile, also slippery. AND LASTLY - tile floors and socks don't work well together, either. Even dry, I could slide all over mom's tile floor in my socks and slippers. Finally had to get me those slipper socks with the little rubber treads on the bottom so I could walk across the floor (my socks had the Green Bay Packers "G" on the bottom!).

But there is a good reason that restaurants use tile - it's bloody durable and easy to clean and you can spill all you want on it and it wipes up lickity split without discoloration.

I've never worked or lived with a hardwood floor in the kitchen, but having hardwood in other rooms, I think that it also would be quite easy maintenance and good. Unless you're a knife dropper.

We did a laminate product that starts with P and ends with O in our kitchen. After two years the finish was wearing off and the planks were warping where water was occasionally spilled (and quickly mopped up.

As you know P*r*o has a great warranty -- it is in all the commercials. However their inspector said "Not out fault, bad installation" We had it professionally installed; I do sincerely believe it was a flaw in the P*rgo product.

We have hardwood now for 3 years and it is great. If you can do it, I recommend it. Tile would be great too.

PS the other bad thing about the laminate was that it was really hard for the dogs to walk on, they couldn't get good traction. So we had to keep our elderly dog off it, it was if she was walking on ice.

onedit: grammar fixed (well, probably not completely, but good enough for the net)

in my kitchen. Have had it there for 3 or 4 years. Easy to clean and doesn't scratch. The advantage over hardwood is you don't have to get it refinished.

I asked a few flooring people before getting it and they had some bad things to say about the P*r*o brand. And I thought Wilsonart was better looking too.

Cork is nice to stand on and when sealed can take kitchen spills with no trouble!

:toast:

:toast:

...You can refinish it when you get the urge. When we redid our kitchen, we stained the floor a neat red to tie into new paint on the walls.

We went with Hardwood (red maple) floors.

Tile is cold in winter, if you're affected by cold weather.

We looked at all the laminate/vinyl stuff. The stuff that used pressboardd was rules out (if you have a plumbing mishap, or even if the water line to the fridge breaks, you've got big problems.)

It turns out that hardwood is very cost effective, even if it was just a bit more $.

j/k!

Sounds like something the Beverly Hillbillies would do....remodel the outhouse.

I edited the original subject line. Thanks for the catch.

:silly:

I don't like hardwood or linoleum for floors that will likely get wet.

Hardwood will get damaged, and linoleum becomes deadly slippery when wet.

Ceramic faux-stone or real stone tiles are best.

easily covers up any 'accidents' you might have. and there's no need to wipe your feet! excellent!

how hard was it to install? We have linoleum in our bathroom and kitchen and I'm interested in ceramic tile, but I wonder how hard/easy it is to install if you have a lot of nooks and crannies to fill (i.e. around the toilet).

have great handouts telling how to do it..some even offer free classes..

You can mark the tiles that need cutting and they will even do the cuts for you :)

It's not hard to lay tile.. just kills your knees & back :)

EDITED TO ADD

if you are doing a bathroom..re-seat the toilet.. so not just cut the tiles around the toilet :)

It's absolutely beautiful, and very easy to clean. So why do I hate it? Because if you get one drop of water on it, someone will land on their ass - it's the slipperiest surface known to mankind. It is not unknown to get water on kitchen floors, and one uncautious move, and you can look forward to a painful fall. It's damned HARD to land on. Also, besides the business of anything you drop shattering - and they don't just crack, they shatter and fly into ten thousand tiny pieces - the tiles themselves can crack if you drop something hard or heavy enough on them, and it's a real pain in the ass to pry the stuff up and replace a tile.

We gave away all the extra boxes of the very expensive marble tile we had left over (the previous owner is the one who laid it down, and he was going to do the laundry room and bathroom in it, too). We'll eventually pull all this stuff up and replace it with something less slippery and not so damned hard.

It works well for selling a house, but I'll never have it again in a house I intend to live in. It's painful.

maybe it's the "protective coating" of DIRT :P