As I mentioned earlier, we want to take on an update to our kitchen. It is stuck in the 1960s at the moment. While we won’t be redesigning the kitchen or affecting the floor plan, there is still a lot of work to be done. Overwhelmed with the choices, I hope that you will help us make some decisions.
In the earlier blog, I went over some of our choices for the kitchen cabinets and the kitchen countertops. Now here are some more decisions that we will need to make.
Flooring
There are so many different types of flooring. Hardwood flooring sounds nice, but I think in the kitchen it will get terribly abused. There is the engineered wood flooring and laminated or Pergo “wood” flooring, but since the rest of the house has hardwood floors, I think having artificial wood might look out of place. Also, with a Pergo wood floor, cleaning can only be done with a damp mop. Specialty flooring, such as bamboo is a great green choice, but impractical in cost for us at this time.
There is also linoleum and vinyl which are the most durable and inexpensive. It is available in many different styles and colors, including the look of tile or stone. It is very easy to clean, and will take the hard scrubbing that I like to do on my kitchen floor. Vinyl, which is more moisture resistant is the practical choice and probably what we will end up choosing, although my heart is really set on the next type of flooring, below.
Ceramic tiles and stone tiles are my choice for the look and the durability. Stone comes in different types, from granite to slate. The downsides of tile is that it is a little more expensive, much more difficult to install and a little harder to clean than vinyl (the grout lines can get dingy). It is also harder than vinyl, so if a dish or glass bowl falls to the floor it will shatter; this is especially scary when there are small children in the house. The biggest reason that tile flooring would be a problem for us is that it requires leveling the floor, a project we are not ready to take on in the immediate future.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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