Cork Floor

[fancytalk]

I was going to just post the sample picture of Cleopatra but the jpeg was too pixelated and looked terrible.

To see the Cleopatra pattern

I couldn't find a good sample of Toledo. it is very similar to the Cleopatra, but red where Cleopatra is blonde.
I think we decided that all the closets and the pantry will be Toledo and the bathrooms and laundry room will be Cleopatra.

yarbiedoll, let us be guinea pigs before you rip out the tile. It is amazing that cork is all the rage. It used to look like sheets of bulletin board, but now Wow, it kind of mimics marble. We had looked at it before in Richmond, but it wasn't advised for wet areas like bathrooms. Or else you had to go through a time consuming task of making sure that there was enough sealer to prevent rot. Now, they are pre-fab tiles with 5 coats of sealer that interlock and you only have to worry about the perimeter in a wet area. And we don't need in-floor heating because cork retains heat spectacularly. Although I have to admit that I am hoping that I'll find the original tile floors underneath the linoleum in the front bathroom. Not sure what I'll do if it's there.

Comments

[yarbiedoll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I will be interested to see how your cork experiment goes. It's a neat material for exactly the reasons you said, but until recently, was ill-advised in damp areas. (As for interlocking floor tiles, I'm all for them. I put Pergo down in our kitchen and two of the bathrooms a couple of years ago and love it.)

And I was only half-serious about ripping out the tile. If I ever decide to do that, it will probably be a bit down the road. It's not bad tile (all white and halfway up the walls in both bathrooms), just dingy even when clean. And since the bathrooms are small, I think it makes them seem claustrophobic (I feel like the tile is growing up the walls and will ultimately envelop the ceiling). I think it was probably done in the 40's (judging by the thin black border around the top), but maybe the folks were just avant-garde homebuilders. That reminds me: I should post what I know about the history of the new house.

[yesimthegirl.livejournal.com]

Definitely will be an experiment considering that we are going to lay the floors ourselves. I'm intrigued to find out how easily (or not) that it will cut.

Yeah, I have to agree with the "live with it until . . ." attitude. In our front bathroom, the same smarty pants who did all the other crazy stuff installed the stuff that they use to make showers on boats. It's literally screwed into the wall AND it's pepto pink. Well, it was pepto pink until I decided to take a paintbrush to it and painted it white until we can have it replaced.

And hurry up and post house history. I love houses with history.