Re: Common House | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com) | |
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 10:16:15 -0800 (PST) |
On 3 Mar 2011, at 4:21 PM, Holly McNutt wrote: > On the subject of Common House design, I am curious to know what type of > FLOORING your Common Houses I just managed a project to refinish the floors in our CH and have some information on this: 1. We have wood floors in the main use parts of the CH — dining room, sun room, and living room. It is warm in feeling, attractive, relatively easy to maintain, and noisy. We have had area rugs in the sun and living room but these are hard to maintain. The wood floors need to be frequently recoated. We didn't do ours soon enough and they had to be sanded three times to clean out the grain. 10 years was too long to let them go. The new eco-friendly water-based urethane sealers are also not as strong and do not give the same luster and honey color as the old stuff. They look pretty white now — not as warm. So you might want to use a stain of some sort. 2. We have cork tile in a long L-shaped corridor that runs from the front entrance, the side rooms, around the dining room to the back entrance and mailboxes. When we had these sanded (they call it screening because they use a soft screen) the top surface was rubbed off in the high spots and the corners where the tile had raised. Probably the glue had accumulated at the corners or moisture had raised the subfloor. All looked fine before the urethane, Traffic by Bona, was applied. Then the light tan floor turned very dark on those spots. It looked awful. What we had them do was come back and screen off the whole surface and re-coat it. We now have a very dark brown floor that is very elegant. A color we wouldn't have chosen because it does show more dust and we would have been afraid it would be too dark. It actually accents the wood floors and tables beautifully. But the surface is now like bare cork because the smooth surface has been removed. The cork is ¼ inch thick, however, so it should last a long time. We just need to coat it a few more times to make the surface more even —the three coats on it now have been absorbed unevenly. It is quiet and soft underfoot. But the subfloor has to be very flat because otherwise the cork will be lumpy. The pictures people post are new floors — no running feet or wheeled vehicles like strollers, roller blades, UPS carts, motorized chairs, etc. 3. We had to replace the linoleum in the kitchen and in areas where it got water or the subfloor deteriorated. Linoleum is a wood product and does not do well with water. it has to be sealed — and looks better sealed. The 10 year old areas that we had professionally cleaned and sealed look almost exactly like the brand new sections right next to it. Unlike cork flooring, linoleum is the same color all the way through thus it will not look worn in spots. The quality of the surface on the 10 year old stuff with a good cleaning and a polish applied is amazing. The installer just shrugged when I asked how long it would last. He said if you keep polish on it, you are wearing out the polish, not the surface and since it is the same color all the way through, you have to wear down a lot of surface to destroy it. Then you can replace strips. Weld the seams. Do not listen to people who say you don't need it. It looks much more finished and is required to keep moisture from deteriorating the glue and the jute backing. DAMP mop only which means a wrung out mop. No water puddling. YouTube actually has good demo videos on damp mopping. In the kitchen we had linoleum click planks. BAD idea. The moisture from mopping, etc, destroyed it. Complete replacement with a solid sheet of Marmoleum. It looks beautiful and is very quiet. According to our flooring installers, Marmoleum is a better product than other linoleums. Linoleum used to be very popular but then vinyls came out. Most companies stopped making it but the Marmoleum people continued to develop the technology. There are new colors and designs. One brochure of designs from Dutch artists is beautiful. I'm considering it for my own kitchen and hallway where I now have wood. The new designs are fun and elegant. ==== I would say definitely consider Marmoleum for heavy use areas. If you can afford it, you can do some of the cutout designs combining several colors and patterns. With a satin polish it is beautiful. Cork is very nice and many people here have put it in their homes but I don't find the surface that different from Marmoleum. That is all I can remember at the moment, Sharon ---- Sharon Villines Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC http://www.takomavillage.org
- Re: Common House, (continued)
- Re: Common House Diana Carroll, March 3 2011
- Re: Common House - cork? Naomi Anderegg, March 3 2011
- Re: Common House - cork? R.P. Aditya, March 4 2011
- Re: Common House - cork? Joanie Connors, March 5 2011
- Re: Common House Sharon Villines, March 4 2011
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