Beebe: kitchen floor

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Lily left the valley »

Welp, yesterday I had to stop myself from ripping up more of the dining room recent vinyl planks to get a better view below. I wanted to put down an actual inside mud rug by the door, and with the planks, it was too tall, so that was the excuse to start removing more, but I came to my senses when I realized I was getting beyond the mud rug needs. We still have kitchen boxes in there. :roll: There are a lot less than before, though! It also turned into the tool room for now because we can't think of a better room since the cellar is dirt and damp with no worktables yet.

On the south east corner, the gold trim is missing as far as I have seen. Again, I'm not sure if at one point they tried to pull up that layer, and decided it was too difficult after they pulled the gold. The more I uncover, the more I'll know. I am worried that the main will be damaged beyond repair, which is part of why I want to just see it. Yet, if it is bad, I'll regret my hastiness. Even though the vinyl planks don't stick to it, it's very, very tricky to get them off without breaking one of the adhesion strips that help them stick to themselves--in particular with heavily trafficked areas. So to try to put them back down really doesn't work in the "quick peek and then back down" sense. I've tried to save what full planks I can in case I can get rid of at least some of it via a Free Craig's List ad, as I'd rather it gets used by someone who needs it rather than sit in a dump. I've been using trimmed wax paper on the adhesion strips to keep them from sticking to whatever as well as picking up dirt and such.

I also had to stop because I am already getting a bit mired in "too many projects at the same time". I have yard work galore (thanks to former tenants), some minor-ish plumbing issues, and finishing the kitchen cleaning (again, ty former tenants :-| ), for starters--none easily or quickly done. Little steps here and there are progressing everything overall along, but I still have to be mindful to not "start another" too much despite the itch. Except for the kitchen and creeping into the dining room floor, I've been pretty good sticking to "need to/should be" fixes.

I'm still hopeful that we'll be able to retain the floor in the dining and possibly the hall as well. The kitchen, we already know is just too far gone unless it turns out footage wise it's easier to patch the kitchen from what's good in the dining/hall. It's highly unlikely we'll be able to even piece match from an out of home source, and I still kinda want cork in the kitchen anyhoo. I'm already eyeballing the long edge of the kitchen to possibly replace the short area near the exterior door that was damaged, and mentally measuring out how much of the kitchen gold trim we might be able to possibly transfer.

phil wrote:{snip}you must have a stash of cool pics, the stuff you come up with is awesome.. that yellow and blue kitchen is so neat.
I do have a lot of images, because I'm very visually minded. I have some in folders where the names of images are things like "border bit on the curtain" or "love this color wall tile", and that's the only reason in some cases that I have a picture of an entire room--those bits. :lol: Still, keeping the whole room images helps sometimes (like with Mick's curtain rod issue--I had saved that image due to the border stencil).

When I need new ones, I still hit walls search wise sometimes because I lack either the vocabulary, or haven't yet learned how The Internet wants me to phrase something.
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

Texas_Ranger
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Texas_Ranger »

I wish you luck but I wouldn't put too much hope into taking up some of the old flooring and reusing it. In my experience old linoleum gets awfully brittle and it's close to impossible to do anything with it.

On the other hand what you have looks a lot like Forbo's current offerings, so although it might be expensive you could probably get someone to recreate that floor for you. The red looks close to 3127 Bleckerstreet and the gold might be 3125 Golden sunset.

http://www.forbo.com/flooring/en-gl/pro ... eal/bgxj60

My experience with modern lino isn't too great though. It scratches easily and discolours quite badly over 15-20 years, especially in high-traffic areas. Obviously a kitchen doesn't get anywhere as much use and abuse as a doctor's surgery or university hallway but we still ended up voting against lino for our kitchen project and chose tile. I've seen a new kitchen floor (Marmoleum click) scratched all over after only a few months.

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Al F. Furnituremaker
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Al F. Furnituremaker »

Just a suggestion to try.

I've restored old metal desks (tanker desks) with linoleum tops by cleaning and then sanding the lino with a hand held random orbit sander. Then adding boiled linseed oil to rejuvenate them (lino has a lot of linseed oil in it). After a through drying, wax with liquid floor wax. They look new when done.

So, I tried it on my shop floor. The PO had painted the lino tiles and it looked terrible. It was latex floor paint so a good soaking with water and some scraping removed most of it. Then I sanded with a random orbit floor sander, and waxed. Other than the dents, it came out great. It now needs to be redone after years of working on it, over spray, spills, etc., but too much stuff to move out of the way.

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Lily left the valley »

Al F. Furnituremaker wrote:{snip}Just a suggestion to try.
Thanks, Al! I will definitely give this a try in the not too distant future.
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Al F. Furnituremaker
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Al F. Furnituremaker »

Don't forget to use a respirator. Some old linoleum has asbestos in it.

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Lily left the valley »

I had forgotten there was a scrap of the floor that was one of the many scraps used as a liner on shelves in the kitchen. Here are pictures of that scrap.
Image Image

The good news possibly is that if that tan papery backer is original, then there is less of a likelihood that asphalt is present from what I read on inspectapedia. We had seen evidence of what seemed to be black backing, but as I found out in the dining room, apparently the original wood floor was covered in tar paper before this flooring was laid. When the rad burst, it's possible that the tar paper adhered. I say this because when I was working the missing strip area in the dining room, that's when I found out at least some of the black was tar paper and not mastic as I had thought. It easily came up with a bit of water and rubbing with a sponge. I think the only reason it was barely adhered to the original wood floor was the capillary water issue we had with that side door.

I do not have much experience with real linoleum. In my mind, I was thinking of the spongey softer modern vinyls which I now know is mistakenly called linoleum, So when I realized how stiff and thin this scrap was, I really don't know what that indicates--VC or lino from those two attributes of the product.
Al F. Furnituremaker wrote:Don't forget to use a respirator. Some old linoleum has asbestos in it.
Absolutely. I have two fans I can also use to help pull fumes out via the windows. I have a small piece that was broken off that we hope to send for testing next month if we can't manage it sooner. I also snapped this picture below to show one reason why I'm not certain if the flooring is lino. At some point there was composite plank flooring in the kitchen, and only in this corner is there scoring that matches the width of those planks. My concern is I had read that the primary colorization of lino should be consistent throughout, and the powedery bits seen here are a shade lighter. I don't know if that's due to the seal being broken so that part dried out, and if I apply linseed oil it will darken to match the main color or not. What do you think, Al, based on your experince?
Image
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

Texas_Ranger
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Texas_Ranger »

I'm not sure this is real lino either and that's mainly because of the paper backing - I was under the impression that lino always has a coarse burlap backing. If it isn't lino, it's anyone's guess how it'll react to various treatments. I suppose you could experiment with the small pieces you found and see what happens.

It doesn't seem to be rubber either because all rubber flooring I've seen was solid without any backing at all but there were dozens of different cheap floor coverings before vinyl swept them away.

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Al F. Furnituremaker
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Re: Beebe: kitchen floor

Post by Al F. Furnituremaker »

Lily left the valley wrote: What do you think, Al, based on your experince?


I can't figure out the picture, but all the linoleum I've worked with is solid color through out. The color difference could just be age, stains, etc. Not really sure here.

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