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Need ideas for easiest temporary kitchen floor

13 years ago

Hi! I normally post on the KT, but I have a flooring specific question. I hope you can share some ideas.

We will be doing a complete kitchen remodel in about a year or so.

The kitchen floor, until today, was covered with 30-year-old carpet. Need I say more?

DH tore out the carpet. It had been glued to the vinyl (?) tiles underneath, but it came up easily.

We want to put down a temporary floor; it needs to last no more than 18 months. I want flooring that's easy to install, low cost, and can be mopped with hot water and Mr. Clean.

Under the carpet we found tile that is covered with glue swirls. Most of the glue came up with the carpet. Under the tile is a black layer of ??? It looks almost like the old tar paper or roofing paper. We'd like to wait to tear out the tile and paper when the contractor does everything else.

Can we lay a sheet vinyl on top of the tile without tearing everything out to the subfloor? The new flooring doesn't have to be "perfect." It just has to be clean, dry, and serviceable. I have to be able to mop my floors.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

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Comments (5)

uniquewoodfloors
13 years ago
An inexpensive laminate flooring can be a good choice.
echoflooring
13 years ago
Forget the laminate..You can't ever hot water mop them...out of the question in your case...A loose lay fiber floor is what you want. Tarkett makes some inexpensive ones and also Airstep Plus from Congoleum. The fiber floor can go over top of your tiles and will suck down tight. you will swear it is glued down. It is definitely what you want and will not set you back a fortune. Laminates cant be mopped ever..just damp mopped..very little water. Good Luck
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I am also renovating while living in a very old house. I am also doing it with not one but 2 toddlers. I would say that while living with sub floor or cement is fine for adults, it is not so great for toddlers. I do have sub floor right now in my kitchen and have for about 3 months (floor is going in this month). My kids are not allowed in that room right now because there are splinters that will come up randomly if you walk in socks also it gets dirty and stays dirty you can't really mop it (and we know how much kids spill stuff). And if you have concrete is just plain hard on little knees and poor little heads if they fall. Subflooring is a good solution if you are living with it for short periods while completeing a room and moving on to the next. Our kids are used to a room being off limits for a while then being open again, gates go up and come down around here often, but as a long term solution I would look at a discount store for click laminate if you don't want a cheap carpet. I did a large room in our last rental place for under $100 in laminate we found at Ollies. Even if you don't install all the way to the walls it will give your child something to play on and something for his/her feet to run on. JMO though.
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If you're considering a major remodel in the next few years, then I wouldn't want to build in any thing permanent since it'd just be wasted time and money soon enough. I'd look at free standing or ready-to-install items to meet whatever vital needs you have now . . . For instance, I put in $200 worth of Gundtal IKEA shelving in my kitchen 2 years prior to demolition and remodel. That stuff was 1) cheap 2) met my desperate need for increased storage and 3) totally reusable in any other place I want it. I'd seek some similar solution for your need. So, if it's workspace -- a freestanding island/cart. If it's food storage, a free standing cheap cabinet or shelving or adorable hutch. Etc. For the oven space, I'd definitely live with what you have for the time being. Why change ovens? You aren't increasing your size, and you are committing yourself to an oven for the big remodel. Also, you might find you need new wiring for a new microwave type oven, which won't be cheap IME. I'd live with what you've got, and then, if you really need more cooking space, get a nice large toaster oven for overflow baking. That will be very convenient during the actual remodel when you are truly without a kitchen for some time. I've been baking (for a large family) in a large toaster oven since May . . . It is horrible, but we've survived. (New ovens are finally supposed to be installed next week.) Your space certainly looks like you have room and layout options for a total remodel . . . but you're looking for temporary solutions . . . I'd start with looking for a hutch (or worktable/cart with shelving installed on the wall) that would fit in the current informal dining space adjacent to your kitchen. IKEA has lots of great stuff for this sort of thing. This post was edited by szruns on Fri, Feb 6, 15 at 18:49
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Just to be clear about cork...it is water proof. It's the reason why the bottles of Champagne found on the Titanic were still 'sweet'. The cork (yep...that woody thing sticking out of the bottle) kept the sea water AND THE PRESSURE OF THE OCEAN out of the bottles. Now a GLUE DOWN cork floor (100% cork) is water proof once it has been site-finished with a coat or two of finish. Cork doesn't care about water. It really doesn't. It has the same finish as a hardwood floor. Like hardwood it can have the finish refreshed. Like any floor in a kitchen, cork glue down tiles can and will allow STANDING water to reach the edges of the floor (ie. the walls) to soak the subfloor FROM UNDERNEATH. This is the same issue we have with stone, porcelain tile, wood, vinyl, linoleum/marmoleum, etc. Cork is water proof. The install must be properly done to get it to that situation. A cork floating floor is NOT water proof. And that's where the confusion lies. Everyone wants 'cheap and fast' when it comes to flooring. The kitchen is the LAST PLACE you want cheap. A glue down cork tile floor is going to cost the same amount as a porcelain tile install ($12-$15/sf including materials and labour). Which is why so many people try to work with the $5/sf cork floating floors....only to be disappointed in the performance. And once again....cork is impervious to water. It is one of the only wood products that is. Just sayin'.
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macybaby
13 years ago
I would go with the laminate - It won't hold up well to mopping, but it should hold up good enough for the time you intend it to be there. It has to be the easiest flooring to put down and take back up.

We used that as a temporary floor in our kitchen. Did not really mean to at the time, but plans changed and it didn't hold up as well as we hoped. After a year we knew it was going to be replaced so I didn't worry about it after that- and when we took it out three years later it had handled the job of temporary floor just fine. We got the stuff on closeout so weren't out much $$.

We now have ceramic tile - and had to beef up the subfloor after we pulled the laminate up, but that had nothing to do with the laminate.

Here is our "temporary floor" This took a day to install.

Here is the final floor - put this in last winter.

One advantage of laminate - you can lay half the floor and move everything on top of it, and then lay the second half. Of all the flooring I've installed, click fit laminate was by far the easiest.

I'm not familiar with some of the new loose lay flooring. I've laid some perimeter glue vinyl, and that was way more work in cutting and fitting than laminate, though not as much work as full glue down vinyl.
echoflooring
13 years ago
Mopping it with hot water and Mr clean could ruin an inexpensive laminate in a matter of weeks. I will not argue with posters here as they are entitled to their opinions. I do not care what others do. I will say I asked the president of my company a couple of days ago your exact question referring to you...his answer was fiber floor which actually surprised me as to his solution was exactly the same. 1st of all if your temporary floor goes longer than 18 months, which many times it does....a Fiber floor will hang right in their for many years...mop it, spill water on it, your pets can pee on it, it just wont matter. You wet mop a laminate floor two times and it will begin swelling at the joints...That's just a fact. And a fiber floor can be laid in about a tenth of the time a laminate floor can be installed. Those are the facts...and I sell 1/4 million feet of laminate annually compared to 70,000 sq ft of vinyl so it isn't like I am anti laminate. But ultimately, it is up to you. Water and Laminate mix about as well as water and oil....They don't..
User
13 years ago
Here was my experience in my old cottage at MoccasinLanding.
I got a sheet vinyl and laid it over the existing asphalt 9" squares original to the house. Around the rim, I had the quarter round put down. It worked VERY well, even with 2 dogs 2 cats and 16 parrots. Parrots make a lot of messes, and it was very easy to clean the vinyl sheet. When I sold the house about 2 years later, the same sheet vinyl was down, and the new owners took out everything afterward, but it still looked shiny, even with all the constant cleaning. The product was cheap, easy to put down, cleaned like a dream, and lasted as long as I needed it to.

Now in this house we are doing the same sort of thing you are doing. We had the worst looking worn out damaged sheet vinyl you ever saw on the kitchen floor. The back porch also needed to have some flooring installed since we were planning to use it as it existed for a couple of years until we could unify the two spaces with a remodel. So I made a choice of 16" square sticky back vinyl tiles from Lowes (a mottled terra cotta color) and it is NOT a shinyy surface. DH installed it all himself, and it is quite nice and wears well. We now have only two dogs and two parrots, no cats, and the wear and tear is not as significant. But the product has been down about a year and looks as new as when we installed it. When the time comes we will remove all the layers of asphalt tile and vinyl tile down to the subfloor and lay new wood foundation for the porcelain tile we have already picked out. BTW, the sticky back tile has not come loose, and it is easy to clean. No shine on this product.

And this picture shows how he repaired the rotted floor after we removed the old gas waterheater, and then finished laying the sticky back vinyl on the back porch.

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