Eclectic Red Barn: Broken washing machine, means new floor!

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Broken washing machine, means new floor!

Nothing like seeing water floating all over your laundry room floor to make your day. Well that is what happened last Monday. Our laundry room is between the kitchen and the garage. Water ran into the garage but not into the kitchen. I had projects out there that had to come up off the floor and be dried off. What a mess!

The new washing machine couldn't be delivered until Wednesday night. We had put down Brazilian Cherry re-engineered flooring in the great room and into the kitchen. We stopped where the kitchen meets the laundry. It has been that way for 2 years.

Here's the new floor. The dogs seem to like it. This is their area since I feed them here and their water bowl is here.

Eclectic Red Barn: Finished laundry room with new tile

With the laundry area being cleaned out, why not finish the floors? I was reluctant to put the Brazilian Cherry down now that we had had a flood. What if it happened again? We had these pinkish ceramic tiles in the great room, kitchen and pantry area. Too much tile to remove, so we put the Brazilian Cherry flooring on top.

Eclectic Red Barn:Laundry room with old ceramic tiles

As you can see we still have them in the pantry area. What to put on top of these? We decided to go with vinyl peel and stick tiles. They have a thin version and a thick version - get the thick. I put them in another house and after 5 years they still look great.

We laid them like you would hard wood floors - we staggered the seems. This makes the process easier and you don't have to worry about making sure all of your lines are straight. That can be difficult especially with an older home. Our walls all seem to be crooked.

Eclectic Red Barn: Adding vinyl tiles to laundry room floor

You lay out the first row and then place a tile in the center of two tiles. Make sure you are NOT on a grout seam. You may find that during the process you will end up on a grout seam, but that is alright. Most of them will not be. You can use a utility knife to cut them. Make sure that you have an old board under the tiles when cutting them so you don't cut your floor.

Eclectic Red Barn: Staggering vinyl tiles

These vinyl tiles are available at Home Depot and Lowe's. They are relatively inexpensive and easy to work with. To complete the laundry and pantry room it cost around $110 for about 90 square feet. They have many varieties and you can even grout them if you want. They are great in mud rooms, laundry rooms and if you aren't sure what flooring you really want currently. They can be removed at a later date. Haven't tried that yet. I put them in our kitchen in the other house for now, because we are going to rip out the kitchen at a later date.

We managed to finish the laundry area before the washer arrived. The pantry area is next and we still have to finish the transition from the kitchen.

Sometimes good things come from bad things! The floor is finally done! Now all I have to do is "spruce" up the laundry area and clean out the pantry.

I will post the finished rooms when I get them done.