Tag Archives: marmoleum

Marmoleum Basement Flooring, a good choice?

Is Linoleum by Marmoleum Basement Flooring a good choice?

Yes, original Forbo Linoleum is certainly a great choice for a basement floorMarmoleum basement flooring borderThe thing that people really like about marmoleum basement flooring, and especially the one and only original Marmoleum resilient flooring is the warmth. Don’t misunderstand that the floor is actually warmer than other floors at all. It just feels that way. It’s just the way our bodies react that putting your feet on ceramic tile or linoleum would have the linoleum feel warmer.

 

Pick the Colors of your Marmoleum Basement Flooring & Furnishings First! For basements, the flooring is the single most significant design element. Since the rooms are usually large and open and they have more floor space than any other room in the home that color can dominate a design. When you pick the wrong color for a basement floor it is usually tragic since it is such a big investment. For that reason, it is a great and wise choice to pick the floor and furnishings in tandem before settling on paint colors or accessories, since they can always be adjusted.

People are always worried about moisture and flooding in the basement and with good reason. While a premium floating floor can be an easy and reasonably priced option it is not cheap. Fortunately, when a proper moisture test is performed you can rest easy. Many installers still use the old fashioned and reasonably reliable calcium chloride method. A newer method uses a meter that is held against the floor with modest reliability. Lastly is the method of drilling holes and inserting electronic probes that register in percentages or temperature. Rapid RH is one of the better methods out there today.

Once you know whether there is significant moisture in a slab that may exceed recommendations for your particular product, you can pick a way to address it. In many cases simply rolling out a padding / vapor barrier may do the trick. Often times it is suggested to cut the piece larger than the room and allow it to run up the wall to be covered by the base trim. This is a good practice to do this. The other options may be to paint on a moisture limiting product which is like painting on a latex rubber coating. The last, most expensive and most chemically undesirable would be to trowel out an epoxy coating. This would typically be used when someone absolutely has to have resilient sheet or tile. Hazardous to breathe in and hard to work with, epoxy moisture mitigation coatings must be skim coated over with a cementious mix before installing the finished floor.

Once all the details are taken care of, Marmoleum basement flooring can be a great choice.

Battleship Linoleum Flooring: Where Did It Go?

Battleship Linoleum Flooring. Why did it go out of style?

Battleship Linoleum seems to be the term that a lot of the empty-nesters use to describe the flooring they grew up with. Why did it go out of production and why did it become so hard to find? There are three main reasons.

1. Plastics

Everyone of a certain age remembers “The Graduate,” where Dustin Hoffman’s character is given the tip of a lifetime ― go into the plastics industry. Plastics certainly made a lot of companies and a lot more people rich by bringing cheaper imitation products to the marketplace.

Battleship Linoleum Plastics Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate

Unfortunately, Marmoleum was one of the casualties. All the other linoleum companies went under or practically died eventually because of cheaper, faster American vinyl plastic.

2. Lasts Too Long

With the amazing boom in prosperity back in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans wanted to upgrade everything they owned to the newest and most advanced luxury option. Many were still standing on linoleum floors from the 1920s and 1930s and were just plain sick of it. In a nutshell, linoleum simply lasted too long for many people’s tastes.

3. Complex Installation

With the advent of click together linoleum, there is a resurgence of natural flooring being installed. Too few trained installers in the marketplace means that prices go up with supply and demand and many folks are priced out of the market when they get a quote for sheet goods. Tile installations and click are a good compromise when the budget is limited.

Battleship Linoleum Today

The navies of the world also have a desire to be fashionable. Sadly, that often means that toxic and hazardous epoxy paints are often being used in place of naturally durable and beautiful battleship linoleum. The good news is that the armies of the world are still specifying old fashioned lino roll goods for their barracks. Additionally, we already know that schools and hospitals are crazy about the stuff because it holds up.

Battleship Linoleum

For more information on commercial-grade linoleum flooring, please contact us at GreenHomeFloors at 844-356-6784 or visit www.greenhomefloors.com

Marmoleum, in the Bathroom?

Bathroom tile flooring choices? Here was the original question asking about Marmoleum. :

Our house has 6 month old sheet marmoleum in the new kitchen, 6 year old marmoleum tile in entryway and laundry room. Absolutely love it!! We’re about to lay new flooring in two small bathrooms and would like to know which bathroom tile flooring would be best for our project?

Lisa

First off, Lisa, I LOVE that you LOVE Marmoleum. Here are your considerations:

Colors: When comparing “MCT Tile”, which is a little thinner than the traditional “Dual Tile” the colors for MCT are a little more muted, pastel and institutional. That doesn’t mean you are not going to find colors that work for your project. Also for folks that may want to mix tiles with sheet goods or borders like in this bathroom photo then you would need to go to the Dual Tile since it is the same thickness.

Cost: Lots of people are attracted to the lower price of MCT but when you factor in that it only comes in 54 sq ft boxes, you may want to compare the cost of the Dual which also comes in boxes of 9. Even though you are paying more per square foot, you may not have much leftover after accounting for cutting and possibly a few errors. The real economical beauty of Dual for bathrooms comes into play when you want to add random colors or do patterns of multiple colors. Buying full cartons of 45 tiles in MCT just isn’t practical for this situation. NOTE: When it comes down to it, unless you are really pinching pennies, you should buy what you like!

 

Blue Marmoleum with a Border

A serene blue with a border is a true flooring artisan’s touch and invites you to fill it up and stay awhile.

Durability: If you were to remove the Top Shield finish from Marmoleum, you would be left with the exact same linoleum that your great-great-grandmother had as her bathroom tile flooring. Without Top Shield, grandma had to wax and periodically strip her yellowed wax floor to protect it, or she could just let it wear naturally and gradually amber. If you did that, the Dual because it is 2.5mm thick would last longer than the 2.0mm MCT tile, but that is really not a concern today with the protective coating that you can apply as periodic maintenance.

UPDATE: Forbo has revised their finish formula and now offers TopSheild2 which is one of the most durable and long lasting coatings on the market for flooring today, especially for Marmoleum bathroom tile flooring. This top layer of finish will protect your Marmoleum for a very long time no matter which product you select. Find out more on the Forbo page about TopShield2.

Forbo Top Shield 2 for Bathrooms

Lastly, here are the Forbo Flooring General Guidelines for Installing Marmoleum Tiles.

Bathroom Tile Flooring Marmoleum General Guidelines a

Hope that helps

Marmo