Yesterday, we had our marmoleum kitchen floor installed and we love it. It’s completely worth not having a refrigerator in the kitchen for the next 36 hours while it continues doing whatever it’s doing before we seal it Wednesday night. We do have a fridge in the garage though, so that is helpful. I’m just not doing much cooking for the next couple of days. Again, though, completely worth it!

The Details
I seriously thought this would never happen. We started by going to Marion’s Carpets, which stocks marmoleum and in the beginning, seemed that they would be easy to work with. Nope. Now, perhaps carpet through them is fine, but trying to get Marmoleum purchased and installed through Marion’s was like trying to get the kitchen floor covered in gold, with the work only being able to be completed by exotic and highly-skilled, yet surly circus animals. Also, Marion’s was very bad at returning phone calls. In addition, we had to put a deposit down for materials before we could get an estimate (we got this back). Oh and they are overpriced. Blah.

Plus, the contractor they sent out never left us with a bid sheet or an estimate of his costs — we just got the cost for the marmoleum (about $800!!?). While trying to get an answer as to why the estimate was so high, our salesman asked if jwa (the male) was home while the measurements were taken on the kitchen. Because, I kid you not, as a female, apparently, I may not have noticed if the contractor had accidentally measured the dining room and the living room as well. Uh. Okay. Buh-bye, Marion’s. You suck.

We next tried to get a few basic installation estimates from other contractors but without much luck. Why is it so hard to find someone who is bonded, reliable and knows what they are doing?

The marmoleum sits in the dining room…waiting

Finally, we turned to (and should have used from the beginning) Linoleum City. Their Marmoleum prices are about $10 less per square yard than Marion’s. Plus, they work with Dave from DJs Floors for installation, who, in a word, is awesome. Our materials costs came to about $450 through Linoleum City — oh, don’t ask me how the hell the Marion’s contractor measured — I’m just a girl!

About a 1/3 done…Hooray!

Dave and his son came early Monday morning and patched up the old floor where it was coming up and covered the whole floor lightly with a cement-like topping. Let it dry and scuffed it up so the Marmoleum adhesive would have something to hold on to well. Then, they started to put the Indian Summer floor down.

Almost there!

Another good thing is that DJ’s Floors is bonded and insured. Seems like a given but you’d be surprised at how many contractors we met with that were not. This is a good source for finding out that information (in Oregon — I’m sure every state has this type of information online, you should seek it out).

So, we will be eating out the next couple of days (Detour Cafe for Breakfast on Monday and PokPok for dinner that night — basement dining room opening in about a month, by the way. Oh and the new lamb skewer special is really good!)

The kitchen when we first bought the house (almost) 4 years ago and now. The counter tops are the next to go.

Resources

Indian Summer

Thank you, Photoshop
Last night, I took our three contenders, Indian Summer, Red Copper and Henna (jwa got the sample finally), laid them out, took pictures and made somewhat-crappy-yet-still-helpful photoshop images showing each floor choice color.

Henna

The whole look that we are going for is relatively bright and cheery with warm tones. We want it to be inviting — to wake us up in the morning and welcome us home at night. Is that too much to ask? Oh, and hide pasta sauce spills! Still kidding!

Red Copper

I think Indian Summer is our favorite. I love Henna, but it seems a little dark. Red Copper seems a little bright. Indian Summer might be just right. I also think the Indian Summer is a balanced tone with the walls, where again, the Copper is a bit bright and the Henna is a bit dark.

And, I did consider briefly putting in patterns or using more than one color but jwa really didn’t like that idea — and he’s paying for it so I guess he gets a vote. I still think patterns would be cool but I’m going to be extremely happy with a new floor — and an orange one at that! Plus, the more cuts they need to do (for patterns and designs and even around corners and stuff), the more expensive it is. And marmoleum, as awesome as it is, isn’t super cheap…

Speaking of which, next comes getting the estimate, which is never as much fun as picking out the color….

Next week: IMBB/SHF, Chicken stuffed with pistachios and mushrooms, oh, I think WCC is coming up, and perhaps an orange cake.

Since I spend so much time cooking and making messes in the kitchen, it’s an environment that is very important to me. Since we’ve moved into the house, I’ve painted the walls, the cabinets, gotten new hardware for the cabinets and we’ve replaced the old refrigerator.

Now, we are starting to investigate new kitchen floor options. I think I have it narrowed down to the material a least — now we just need a color. But first, let me talk about how much I dislike the current floor. It’s gray and dingy and coming apart at the seams. Literally. I’ve tripped over the seam many times and even ripped some of the flooring off the…well…floor. The old floor is gross and shows all kinds of kitchen mishaps and spills. And it’s dangerous! One day I will be carrying a beautiful plate of tuna or something similarly tasty and I will trip and the tuna will go sailing across the dining room, like only a plate of seared tuna with a soy-ginger dipping sauce can…

Okay, with that out of my system, I’ll now move on and profess my love for Marmoleum — what will hopefully become the new floor. It’s pretty, comes in great colors, easy to walk on, natural, biodegradable and endorsed by hippies. What more could one want in a flooring material?

Here are our first round of choices: Indian Summer (the darker orange), Red Copper (the lighter orange) and Eucalyptus (green). We also picked Henna, but that sample didn’t come in yet. That’s a very dark orange.

I am currently torn between the two oranges shown above, where as jwa likes the Red Copper best. Although, both will hide pasta sauce spills quite nicely, so I am happy either way. Joking! I clean the floor! Yeah! Ha!

My only concern with Red Copper, is that it may contrast (or not contrast at all) weirdly against the oak floor in the dining room. I like the bolder marbling effect in Indian Summer, but the lighter orange does look great against the white cabinets. They pop! Pop, I say.

Currently, the walls are a color called “squash” and the cabinets are bright white. jwa is going to pick up a Henna marmoleum sample (right?) from a different store today, but I think that may be too dark. We’ll see.

So, any ideas on the three floor color choices so far? Are we all leaning towards Red Copper? Or will Indian Summer make a comeback? And the green — meh?

Well, not really, but it was the motivation to paint it and change the appearance. There’s only so much Law & Order a person can watch in the afternoon — or so I’ve heard. Um, anyway, this is the way the kitchen looks now. Here’s what it looked like when we moved in:

That said, the very first room we tackled after buying the house was the bedroom. We ripped up the dingy off-white carpet and painted the white (equally dingy) walls a dark blue. Now it is a dark & sleepy cave. (Pictures soon).

Then, we — and when I say we, I mainly mean I — took down the horrible floral wallpaper in the dining room — but hey, different people like different things. I’m sure the old home owners would have described that as lovely floral wallpaper. And I’m just kidding, he helped. If I remember, jwa did a lot of the 2nd coat of paint on the walls. But the stripping — that was all me. And it was nasty. I’m really glad we like the wallpaper that is in parts of the living room!

After the dining room, I moved on to the stairway and upstairs hallway. I believe this was the very first unemployment project, in fact. What was pink and taupe became pale yellow and dark blue. Then, as it seemed probable that a new job wasn’t happening as soon as I thought, I started on the kitchen.

Ah, the kitchen…

First thing, I painted the cabinets a glossy white and attached new hardware. Mostly, I ordered these for all the cabinets and drawers (I think in total it was about 16). They are a lot darker in real life than in the photgraph here. But, for a couple of the drawer pulls, we splurged and ordered really nice artisan ones. We have two lizards on the cabinets under the sink and two moose on a couple of the larger drawers. A look at the price will let you know why we only have four of these pulls.

I believe when I said, “Oh! Sweetie, I found the cutest drawer pulls today. I want to get a few. Let me have your credit card”, I neglected to mention the price. Sneaky! (Pete).

One small, miniscule drawback to these wonderful metal pulls that I love so much, is that they are very dangerous, not as in “oh, ow” dangerous but as in “oh my god! I’m bleeding & I need a tourniquet!” dangerous. The lizards have claws. Sharp, pointy, metal claws. I have gashed my hand a time or two and so has jwa. He, has proclaimed that he really dislikes the lizards and that they are impractical and unsafe, but I know that you have to suffer for art.

With the cabinets done, I moved on to the walls — a bright sunny yellow. I believe it was called squash and it does have a touch of grey in the hue. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Eventually, we want to replace the gray, dingy wall tiles with bright blue cobalt ones and the gray, hard vinyl-like floor with something a bit spiffier. I’m kind of going for a sunny, bright Spanish looking kitchen. Ole!

Here are a couple more before and after shots.

The new (notice the lizards?)

vs. the old (no lizards):

Tagged with: kitchen photos