The choice of linoleum and its styling

For a long time people have been repairing compared with natural disaster. However, until recently, I did not take this common expression seriously. Well, what could be an archie of complex, say, wallpapering or laying linoleum? Ah no! People just won’t say that. I was personally convinced of this when my husband and I decided to thoroughly repair the kitchen.

Fairly tormented with the walls and ceiling, we finally proceeded to the final stage of the repair work: laying the flooring. However, to begin with, we should determine what kind of coating we will be laying? After wandering around various web resources and visiting several construction stores, we found out that the most common flooring options are:
- linoleum;
- laminate;
- parquet;
- carpet;
- ceramic tile.
We dropped the carpet right away. A kitchen, by definition, is not the place for such flooring. Parquet seemed too expensive. In addition, in our opinion, it, like a more affordable laminate, does not have a high degree of moisture resistance, which is important for a kitchen room. It remained to make a choice between linoleum and ceramic tiles. This was not a big deal. We had experience using these types of flooring, so ceramic tiles did not seduce us. Without installing a heating system, the ceramic floor is quite cold. In addition, almost any accidentally dropped thing on such a floor shatters. Guided by these circumstances, we finally and irrevocably decided to take linoleum. However, the question immediately arose, how to choose the one that suits us from the many varieties of this flooring? Interrogating with prejudice sales consultants, we found out that for the right choice of linoleum, you need to pay attention to its characteristics, including:
- class of application;
- application area.
The first indicator allows you to judge the wear resistance of the floor covering. It is indicated by the numbers 21, 22, 23, 31, 32, 33, 34, 41, 42, 43. Moreover, the larger the number, the stronger the linoleum.
The second indicator determines the type of linoleum, depending on where it will be operated. In this regard, there are household, semi-commercial (office) and commercial linoleum. As a rule, household linoleum corresponds to the 21st, 22nd and 23rd application classes. Semi-commercial - 31-34. Commercial - 41-43.
In our case, the determining factor was that linoleum was planned as a kitchen flooring, so we decided to purchase household linoleum of 23 application classes. A kitchen is such a room that is experiencing maximum load, so buying a flooring of a lower class of application would be impractical.
In addition to these indicators, we also drew attention to the structure of linoleum. It turned out that at the request of the buyer they can be offered linoleum on a foamed basis (characterized by increased moisture resistance), on a fabric basis (it retains heat well) or baseless (least durable, but there are practically no signs of wear on it). We opted for linoleum with a fabric base of felt.
When the issue with the acquisition was resolved, the most crucial stage in our repair work began - in fact, the process of laying the flooring itself. By family advice, we decided not to resort to the help of third-party masters, but to cope on our own, with our own hands.
Before laying linoleum, we let it lie down at room temperature for two days. In parallel, we prepared the floor in the kitchen. We have concrete. We were lucky, having checked the floor surface with a building level, we found that it would not be necessary to level it with a concrete screed, but some roughnesses, nevertheless, would have to be putty. The width of linoleum almost coincided with the width of the room, so we only needed to cut off the excess a little, however, provided that there was a gap of 5-10 millimeters between the walls and linoleum (this is necessary to avoid deformation). Frankly, here we made a mistake: we did not set up a “cutting circle” in the kitchen, but in the hall, where it was more spacious. Old linoleum was used as a template. However, this should not be done. Adjustment of the flooring should still be carried out where it will be laid. The fact is that the "template" method used by us failed - the gap between one of the walls and the linoleum turned out to be slightly more than the desired 5-10 millimeters.
Since our kitchen area is small and we often didn’t plan to move furniture on it, we did not stick linoleum over the entire surface: we planted liquid nails in only a few places where there was a risk of touching the edge. In particular, near the door sill. Plinth fasteners became the final touch on the flooring.
So, by trial and error, we dealt with our "natural disaster" in the kitchen. I hope my modest repair experience will be useful to someone.