Floorcovering Dilemmas

Vinyl, Ceramic, Cork, Bamboo, or Nylon?

We're doing new floorcoverings at our Trail West house in the kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, and a study. The oak hardwood floors in the living room and dining room will get a fresh coat of varnish.

All the rooms are relatively small, so we have the option of perhaps finding remnant pieces of carpet or sheet vinyl. Hiromi is certainly hoping so.

Clare prefers non-carpeted floors--both as a cleaning preference and for its allergy-minimizing potential. t's probably safe to say that anyone who has recently removed old carpeting understands its allergenic effects as evidenced by the mounds of dirt that are left behind. I'm certain that I'm not the kind of housekeeper that would be able to avoid the dirt accumulations under carpeting. We're willing to take Clare's preference into consideration, but we know how cold the floors in that house can get in the winter. The floors are apparently uninsulated, and there is no basement underneath. So carpeting has some appeal for its warmth. Hiromi regularly does floor exercises too--most comfortably so on a carpeted floor. But perhaps cork would be a reasonable compromise. It's very cushioned, easily cleaned, and especially suitable in "dry" rooms of the house. Not cheap though.

High quality bamboo flooring is harder than oak flooring. We're considering that for the study--the smallest "bedroom." The kind we'd be likely to get is "strand" bamboo, made by separating the "wood" into fibers and then mixing it with a binding agent and pressing and milling it into tongue and groove board shapes. Bamboo is, of course, a very familiar building material for Hiromi, and using it for flooring seems very right to him.

Bamboo and cork are both touted for their "green" qualities. Bamboo canes that are harvested for high quality flooring are 5-7 years old. Cork can be harvested every few years with no damage to the tree that produces it. So both are renewable. Cork flooring is apparently made from waste generated when bottle-stopping corks are manufactured. Both of them can have a factory-added ten-layer surface coating that makes it easy to clean and nearly impervious to liquids or damage from objects.

I hear that nylon carpet fibers are the most durable and easiest to keep clean. I haven't a clue whether such carpets are easy to find--especially in a coveted remnant piece of exactly the right size.

The kitchen floor will not be ceramic--too hard and cold. We were about to buy luxury vinyl tile, which can be laid and grouted like ceramic tile, but heard from Joe that theirs very promptly got nicks and gouges in it. The kitchen is only 8 feet by 15 ft. so buying sheet vinyl on a roll either involves seams or a huge amount of waste. That's why I think the plank types might deserve consideration. They are joined into a floating floorcover by narrow strips of glue along the sides of the planks. The main dilemma here is that most of the patterns are wood grains, in the heavier weights and more durable finishes, and that's not really what I idealize in the kitchen. We already put some of this (in a tile pattern) in the bathroom, but the HD special is not as heavy vinyl as seems ideal for a kitchen.

Is there anyone among my readers who has a floorcovering experience that you'd like to share? My dislike for shopping in general applies to shopping for floorcoverings in particular, so anything in your experience that would save me research or shopping time would be welcome.

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