Friendly flooring for the kitchen
With the new year underway many people are thinking about remodeling or renovating their kitchens. The normal place to start is looking at the cabinets and then the flooring. But because replacing you kitchen cabinets is a more costly project to undertake we are starting the with flooring.
There are three flooring choices that were gaining popularity at the end of 2006 and will be becoming a standard for new homes in 2007, namely Linoleum, cork and bamboo flooring.
Linoleum flooring for the kitchen is not what we used to call vinyl floor tiles, the two products are only similar in that they are both easy to install and easy to maintain and clean after that they are very different. Vinyl usually purchased as tiles is a plastic product with enviromentally unfriendly chemicals in them like chlorine and plasticizers. Lino on the other hand is a mixture of wood fibers, cork, plant resins, powdered limestons and linseed oil on a backing of jute.
Back in the day you could only buy linoleum in a few colors, not many patterns and it had a tendency to crack or curl with age. New manufacturing standards and higher quality products have taken care of this. You can now buy your favorite colors in reds, greens, blues and with a blend of shades in between to use with very decorative patterns. If this type of flooring is installed properly it will last you upwords of 20 years if cared for and cleanded properly. The nice part about lino that vinyl doesn't have is that the color goes right throught the sheet so that if it scratches or someone puts a gouge in it from moving something it doesn't show up very well. Vinyl the color is only on the surface so scratches on this type of flooring stands out. To fix a deep mark in a linoleum floor you can simply fill it in with a colored wood glue. Read more aboutsheet vinyl and linoleum floors here.
Bamboo is more eviromentally friendly than wood planks made of oak, because it is more like a grass and only takes 6 years to mature and is easier to grow back. This exotic looking floor is a fovorite in new kitchens. How they get bamboo flooring to look like real wood is throught the manufacturing process. Narrow strips are cut and then glued to a tongue and grove strips or planking that then shows grain lines as if you where looking at a piece of hardwood. This type of flooring is as hard and durable as maple or oak floors but is less likely to shrink in humid climates. To read more information about natural bamboo flooring go here.
The number one choice for quality has to be cork flooring, it is a soft material made from shredded bark of cork trees. It is available in tiles or boards. The pattern options are vareried so you don't have to have the standard cork board looking floor, although it looks really cool when finished. This type of flooring is strong enough for family traffic and has a very soft feel to it when walked on. For more information about natural cork flooring here. Other home flooring ideas can be found on this page.
