my flo is linoleum!

Well, I didn't work on projects yesterday. I was busy using my few free hours on a job that's been on my mind for months. I started tearing up our awful sheet vinyl kitchen flooring and replaced a small section with vinyl composite tiles. These are essentially linoleum tiles. VCT is the stuff you see on the floor in most grocery stores - but I love it anyway. It's very inexpensive, it holds up a whole lot better than sheet vinyl (which is ALWAYS dirty - regardless of how many hours I waste trying to scrub it), it installs easy easy and when you lay them out in well-thought-out patterns I think it looks pretty darn cool. I'm laying mine out parquet style. This way it doesn't even end up looking like a grocery store floor because it gives it a basket weave look. The most attractive thing about it is that I can install it myself. Bought this cutter that makes trimming down the tiles really easy - and it wasn't very expensive, beats cutting each tile by hand with a utility knife. Since I don't often have a huge chunk of time for working on home projects, this is easy to do in phases. The hardest part about it is pulling up the old flooring. The woman we bought this house from had new sheet vinyl installed three times. Each time, the installer glued it right down on top of the old flooring. So I've got three layers of vinyl to pull up! Doing this in phases will also make it easier to dispose of the old flooring - can throw it in our garbage in batches. But, oh, I can't wait for the entire kitchen to be done. VCT cleans so easily. It's not nearly as absorbant as the sheet vinyl. The other bugger with sheet vinyl is that whenever you lay a rug with any kind of rubber backing, the vinyl eventually yellows with time. UGLY! I honestly don't understand why they still make and sell this stuff. Because it's cheap, I guess. And it comes in all these goddy faux finishes. Flowers and fake wood grain. No thanks. I'd rather my kitchen floor look like the grocery store. There's a reason they use this in grocery stores - it holds up. It's durable, it cleans easily and it doesn't look all that bad. So anyway, that's what I've done with my Friday afternoon.

*

Today is a very wet, stormy Saturday. Thunder and lightening last night - can't even remember the last time we had a storm like this. Because of the infrequency of thunder and lightening here, it always spooks me out.

*

So maybe I'll just stay inside and be creative.