flooring
I pulled up a section of the worn out berber that covers my entire house, and discovered the fabulous aggregate concrete floor in the loggia section of the living room. It needs some minor restoration work - patching where the carpet tack strips were nailed in around the perimeter and a new top coat of some sort. Does anyone know what kind of coating was put on these originally? Has anyone attempted restoration of the original aggregate floor? Any advice you can give me?
The original tiles are in place under the carpet throughout the rest of the house. They're in pretty rough shape, and I'm probably going to just put new carpet in the family room and living/dinning room - will deal with asbestos tile removal and appropriiate period flooring some other year. But I'd like to put cork in the hall now. Can I glue cork tiles to the linoleum that's there (assuming I'm willing to live with rise that will create at the edges of the aggregate)? Or must I have the linoleum removed before proceeding with cork? How about a new subfloor on top of the linoeum, then the cork on top of that - anyone have any experience with that? That's likely to create an even bigger step up, which I'm not sure I want. I'm really not up for the cost of the tile removal just yet, as the quote I got last Fall was pretty significant.
Thanks for your help! -Lynne
We installed cork flooring in our Eichler in 1999. The man who did the work specializes in cork and has started doing concrete and bamboo as well. He might be able to help you with the restoration of your original floor since he has years of experience with Eichlers.
Before he began the job he recommended that we remove all existing flooring including linolium tiles so that he could prep the floor with a skim coat of Ardex--a thin concrete like substance for leveling out floors. Because of the nature of cork any bumps, seams, or uneven areas will telescope through it if the floor has not been carefully prepped. We saved some money by doing the demolition work ourselves which took about 2 days. My e-mail is: [email protected] if you would like the installers name.
Cork is soft, resiliant, and fades in the sun. Ours did not fade in the hallway that is not close to the windows but faded alot in the public rooms. It also works well with the radiant heat which is why we chose it.
There are many manufacturers of cork--here's one in the U.S.
http://www.expanko.com/
