Sticky Floors

Another lesson in buying your first home: you will never catch everything that is wrong during an inspection.

Case in point - my kitchen floor.  As you can see, it's just sheet vinyl. Nothing particularly fancy.  It wasn't horribly ugly, but I wasn't in love with it either.

And even though I spent several hours (along with my parents and my inspector) in my house before I bought it, it was only when I was loading up the fridge on move in day that I noticed a large crack in the floor.

There is an island, so when they laid down the sheet of flooring, there obviously had to be a seam where the flooring was cut.  However, it could have been installed properly (how that is done, I have no idea).  Since I wasn't particularly fond of the flooring anyway, I never fixed the seam because I planned on replacing it at some point in the future.

So three years later, after mopping over it and general traffic, the seam looked like this:

Ick.

I was prepping my house to list it for sale, and I knew the flooring needed to be replaced.  I didn't want to spend a ton of money, and my dad mentioned something that he had seen on HGTV (he watches daily, he has no shame).

Peel-and-stick flooring.

Yes, you probably just had the same reaction that I did.  NO FREAKIN' WAY.

We had the peel-and-stick tiles in our laundry room when I was growing up. They were hunter green with diamond centers and to this day I still have nightmares about how ugly they were.

That was not going in my house.

Still, I humored my dad and let him take me to Lowe's to take a look at said peel-and-stick flooring.

There were options that looked like wood planks and tile that was actually grout-able.  I was absolutely blown away by the appearance, but the online reviews still had me skeptical.  Would the adhesive really work?  And if so, for how long?

Only one way to find out.

Lowe's was running a special where you received $10 off an order of $50 if you ordered online and picked up your items in the store, so my entire kitchen floor (around 180 square feet) cost me $156.00.

Definitely worth giving it a try.

I chose the wood plank option because grouting seemed like a hassle, and a wood-like surface was what I was really aiming for anyway.  Many of the reviewers stated that the adhesive didn't work and the planks buckled immediately.  I was so apprehensive that I kept the boxes and paper backing just in case the flooring didn't work so I could return it.

Three months in - it still looks fabulous.

I laid the planks directly on top of my existing kitchen flooring.  I vacuumed the surface once, mopped it with a water/vinegar solution, vacuumed once more, and mopped it with water/vinegar a final time.

The directions tell you how to initially lay out the planks, and we opened several boxes at a time and pulled planks randomly from each box to mix up the pattern.  Just peel back half of the paper, apply it to the floor, and pull back the rest of the paper as you lay down the plank.  The planks are extremely pliable, and although the directions tell you to score the plank with a box cutter, most of the time we were able to just snap the plank where we needed it (straight edges weren't a big deal for my kitchen).

Yes, that's my lovely mother slaving away.  Hi, mom!

The glue is atrocious.  I mean, really.  It was on the sides of the planks and it was a nightmare once it got stuck to your hands.  But a little canola oil removed it, and we had to take several breaks to get the goo off of our hands during the 8 hours (yes, it took us 8 hours) of installation.

I have to say this - my mom has some patience.  I would have quit on me a few hours in.

I've only found one setback - it scratches easily.  I noticed immediately that my dogs' nails were leaving marks on the floor.  You can only see it when the light shines on the flooring a certain way, but I'm extremely OCD and I know the scratches are there.  The real question is - can you see them?

So if you have pets, I might be a little apprehensive about putting this flooring down.  No critters running about? No issue.  It looks amazing, was a fraction of the cost of laminate or actual wood flooring, and it's water resistant to boot.

And just in case you were wondering - Lexi approves.

So, much like my recent wallpaper discovery, peel-and-stick floors are back. And until I told my Realtor that the floors were really peel-and-stick, she had no idea.  Mission accomplished.

Jordan