Drop It To The Floor

If you want to read this entire blog post with the title song by Pitbull and T-Pain playing in the background, be my guest. I’ll refrain from streaming the video on the page, however, just in case you’re not in the mood for gyrating girls in Tron-lit rubber catsuits. Anyway, when we left off yesterday, the floor was looking pretty darn depressing:

We knew we had to do something about it STAT, but as I said before – we weren’t looking for a forever solution, just something that would look pretty good for 2-3 years. So, wood-tone vinyl tiles seemed like a perfect solution. Unfortunately, the existing linoleum had embossed “grout” lines which needed to be filled before installing new flooring on top. I heard horror stories about an embossed pattern “telegraphing” up to the layer above if you don’t fill it in. And this is the only telegraph action I want in my life:

So, I set about filling in the depressed (in every sense of the word) areas with embossing leveler. It was a bit of a messy project, but it didn’t take too much time. How much time exactly? I don’t know – exactly how long is The Care Bears Movie? That long. 

It only needs to dry for 2 hours before you lay down your tiles on top. While waiting for it to cure, it’s a good idea to crank up the heat because the adhesive on the tiles will stick better if the room temperature is about 70 degrees.

I even brought in a space heater because the day I decided to install the tiles it was about 12 degrees outside. Brilliant! But in the end, it worked great. I just started at the doorway and rolled the tiles down as I went.

Then we reinstalled the threshold and applied a new roll of white cove base (this is like flexible baseboard) along the walls. A little accent rug from Target (with a non-slip mat underneath) brings in some happy color. It looks so fresh and clean now, and the warmth of the wood tones really make the crispness of the cabinets and the coolness of the accent wall pop. I am beyond excited about how the room is turning out!

You may be wondering why in the heck we have a rolling cart in front of our oven. Good question! Turns out that we only use our full-sized oven once a year, if that. When I bake a large turkey it goes in the big oven, but for everything else – casseroles, full-sized pizzas, muffins, cookies, etc – we use the countertop Breville oven. It preheats in about 1 minute and the electricity it uses ends up costing a whole lot less than gassing up the oven. And though it’s hard to tell from this angle, we can use the burners on the stove just fine with this arrangement. Also – in the photo above, you can catch a glimpse of the new hardware and lamps. I’ll get into all that tomorrow!

But first a cost breakdown, so far:
Embossing leveler: $13
Floor tiles: $82 (and I have SO many extras!)
Cove base: $18 (comes in a roll of 240 inches – I needed exactly 237. Score!)
Accent rug: $39
____________
$152

Seeing as though it’s entirely possible to accidentally drop this amount at Target on completely non-essential items, I am thrilled that we have a brand new floor! Do you like?

xoxo,
CA

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