EXPERT PLANNING CREATIVE DESIGN CAD DRAFTING REMODELING SPECIALIST Working to create lifetime kitchens and lifelong friends Kitchen Flooring Ideas Kitchens are the rooms in the home that take the most abuse. The surfaces must be as permanent and cleanable as possible to withstand the wear and tear of everyday use. Selecting a material for your new kitchen's flooring requires thoughtful attention to many issues. The habits of your family; materials available; cleanability; resistance to wear; aesthetic qualities; the subsurface of the floor; compatibility with your choices in cabinetry, countertop and wall surfaces; availability and quality of natural light and artificial lighting; and lastly, budget considerations. My goal as a designer is to give my clients the longest lasting, easiest to clean kitchen possible. To that end, here are my recommendations for a variety of flooring surfaces that can be used in kitchens with good results, their good qualities and negative qualities. I discuss the materials below generally from least to most expensive in the Bay Area. General Considerations • Choose a material, color and sheen that contrasts enough with the color of your cabinetry that cabinets and • • • • • • floor do not get lost in each other. Consider the reflectivity of the flooring material as well as its color. Reflective materials help to bounce light around a room, making the space lighter. Materials that absorb light make for a darker space overall. Compare costs of materials and installation and longevity. The longevity factor is very important and deserves considerable weight since replacing a floor is a hassle at best. Exposure to strong sunlight can discolor many flooring materials, Use UV-resistant film or low-e glass in any windows and/or skylights that shine onto the floor. The substrate under your floor choice is a concern if your choice is not compatible with the substrate. For instance, if your substrate is concrete you may have to use special installation techniques to install a hardwood floor. It can be done but the floor will possibly be higher than adjacent floors and require transitions to span the height differences at entrances. Exterior doors may have to be cut down as well. Tile, on the other hand, could be thin-set right on the concrete, making for an easier and less expensive installation. Conversely, using tile on a wood substrate with less than optimum strength almost guarantees that the tile will crack with the movement we get in our Bay Area earthquakes. Strengthening the underpinnings of the floor would substantially raise the cost of your tile floor. To save costs, choose compatible flooring material. Our practice of extending cabinets all the way to an eight-foot ceiling in our area impacts floor choice as well. Your cabinets must be installed at the height of the finished floor to allow removal of built-in appliances such as your dishwasher. If your finished floor to ceiling height is less than 96", and you want your cabinets to extend to the ceiling, 96" high manufactured cabinets won't fit. You will need to use 90" high cabinets and fill the remaining space with mouldings (or pay for customized cabinets). That's a 6" high loss of storage for all the cabinets that extend to the ceiling! The surface of a kitchen floor should be smooth, in my opinion. Anything else presents cleaning problems and tripping hazards. Kitchen Artworks * 548 Theresa Drive * South San Francisco, CA 94080 * Phone/FAX (650) 871-6006 * email: pderas[AT]kitchenartworks.com Web: http://www.kitchenartworks.com Vinyl Vinyl flooring is the material most everyone considers when they imagine their kitchen floor, at first. Vinyl is available in a myriad of colors and styles to suit almost any decor. Vinyl comes in sheets/rolls 6' or 12' wide. Your first consideration when shopping for vinyl is whether your choice can be seamlessly installed in your kitchen (including coved baseboards, if used). Seams in vinyl flooring are always the first place to fail. Avoid them. Choose vinyl flooring with a minimum of embossing. Highly embossed floors trap and hold dirt making them difficult to properly clean. Exposure to strong sunlight can discolor vinyl flooring. Sharp objects can puncture and tear vinyl flooring. Moving heavy objects, such as your refrigerator, across vinyl flooring without protection can tear the material. Vinyl can not be repaired easily or very effectively. You may be surprised, when you compare, to find that vinyl costs about the same, installed, as longer lasting choices below. Hardwood Solid hardwood flooring has been used in homes for centuries with excellent, long-lasting results. Using hardwood in kitchens is a more recent phenomenon. We used to wax our hardwood floors, and wax and water don't mix (the wax coating turns white and milky). Some years ago a Swedish firm began marketing a finish, Glitsa, in the U.S. that was very hard and durable, making wax obsolete. Kitchen designers and other specifiers discovered that smooth, reflective, warm hardwood makes a great kitchen floor and we have been encouraging our clients to use it ever since. The use of Glitsa has diminished due to its toxic qualities, both for the homeowner and the worker doing the finishing. We are now using polyurethanes and the new water-based finishes. I recommend water-based finishes, even though they are not as long lasting as polyurethanes, because homeowners can touch up traffic areas themselves...That is, IF they have chosen a water-based finish. Hardwood floors are easy to clean because they are smooth. Be sure that you choose material with no grooves for your kitchen to enjoy this benefit. Grooves catch and hold spills like sugar and are a nightmare to maintain. Hardwood can be either finished on the job or prefinished. In our area, we usually use unfinished. With unfinished flooring the floors are sanded before finishing to get everything smoothed out. Then the finish is applied in layers. If you choose the benefits of prefinished flooring material (longer wear, quick occupancy, lower installation cost), be sure to choose a manufacturer like Junkers (pronounced Yunkers), Junkers has a tongue and groove system that aligns every inch of every solid wood board that goes into your floor. The resulting installation is smooth and beautiful. Junkers also has a system that allows installation on concrete without extra height problems. You are only limited by your imagination and budget when examining the various woods that are offered for flooring, everything from the ubiquitous red oak to bamboo to exotics. Stick with the colors that can be obtained by dyes, stains, fuming and finishes. Stay away from whitewashed or painted floors unless you have lots of discretionary money. They do not hold up. Hardwood floors come in the colors of the original wood and darker colors created by stains. The smooth finish tends to be light-reflective in the light to medium tones. Very dark stains and wood show every speck of dust. The colors tend to yellow slightly over time, with exposure to sunlight and artificial light. Solid hardwood floors are repairable and can be screened (only the finish is removed) or sanded and refinished to the extent of their thickness (typically 3/8" or 3/4"). They are easily cleaned with little effort due to their smooth surface. The only enemy is moisture, which can damage a floor if exposure is lengthy or constant. Minor splatters are really no concern with today's finishes. Kitchen Artworks * 548 Theresa Drive * South San Francisco, CA 94080 * Phone/FAX (650) 871-6006 * email: pderas[AT]kitchenartworks.com Web: http://www.kitchenartworks.com Amtico www.amtico.com Amtico is a flooring material made in England. It offers many different looks, which include light colors, 20year warranty durability and cleanability. Amtico can be installed over floor warming systems, concrete, just about anywhere but outside. A custom floor can be easily had with Amtico. They will even laser cut designs for us. Amtico is easily repaired and very resistant to damage. Marmoleum www.themarmoleumstore.com/ Two Forbo production facilities in The Netherlands and Scotland produce Marmoleum. Made of linseed oil and natural materials, the colors tend to be earthy to retro bright. Ideal for those 50's period projects. The material cannot easily be repaired, but is much more resistant to damage than vinyl. Linoleum is an extremely longlasting floor. Major caveat: These materials need to be waxed and periodically stripped to maintain a cleanable shine. Armstrong is making linoleum again as well. Ceramic Tile, Stone Tile and stone floors are beautiful in the right setting and appropriate on the right substrate. The choices in color and texture are endless, including many natural materials. Most tile floors are installed with a substantial grout line that presents a cleaning problem as well as an uneven surface. This can be a safety consideration. Items dropped on a tile or stone floor will break if they are breakable, but my biggest criticism is their hardness. I have back problems and always get a backache after an hour standing on a tile, stone, or even a concretesubstrate floor. Stone floors are usually installed with a minimal grout line, so the grout cleaning and uneven surfaces are not usually an issue. Porous stones need to be sealed against dirt and stains and the sealer needs to be periodically renewed. Tile and stone floors are lifetime floors and can be repaired as long as you save some tiles and grout. Grout is difficult to match, especially colored grouts. For those of you still hungering for more choices; here is an article, by Jo-ann Ivey, I found interesting: Don't feel glued down to wood, stone, tile as flooring choices Resources: Beau Monde, Belmont (650) 654-7703 (Junkers, Amtico, installation & showroom to the trade only) I need to call them before you can visit. http://www.beaumondefloors.com/ Golden State Flooring, South San Francisco, Dublin, Sacramento & San Francisco (hardwood floor material supplier & showrooms) http://www.goldenstateflooring.com/ Bob Stewart/Stewart Tile, (650) 592-7678 (tile setter) ceramic, marble, granite, mosaic, and slate. Stuart Floors, Redwood City (650) 369-2507 (hardwood, vinyl, installation, showroom) Kitchen Artworks * 548 Theresa Drive * South San Francisco, CA 94080 * Phone/FAX (650) 871-6006 * email: pderas[AT]kitchenartworks.com Web: http://www.kitchenartworks.com