Ugly Kitchen Quick Fix - Vinyl Floor Tiles

In my last kitchen post I mentioned that we had just bit the bullet and chosen a strange-for-us, dark grey, click-together vinyl floor tile as an easy quick-fix for our gross kitchen floors.

Exhibit A:

So nasty, right?

The boxes sat in our breakfast room for a good week while we second guessed our decision. The tiles were really dark. And the pattern on them was kind of weird (out of the four samples we brought home I tried to choose the one that looked the least like fake ceramic.) After awhile we came to the conclusion that pretty much anything would be better than what we had before. With the help of his dad, Alex went for it.

They had a few issues to contend with, seeing as our house is a bit odd, and, well, 75 years old. One of the main problems that they had was cutting the tiles to fit under the doorway trim of SIX door openings. Our kitchen has doorways that lead to the dining room, living room, basement, powder room, breakfast room, and pantry. When I called the boys at 2 pm to see how everything was going all I heard on the other end was cursing. At that point I knew it was a bit of a challenging install. Also, they ended up having to place the tile directly over the linoleum (instead of removing it and a layer of plywood) because the gaps under the trim would have been much too big. That required trimming all of the doorway trim with some kind of magical tool that I forget the name of. Even with all of the hiccups, the whole installation took about two weekend mornings.

I'll be honest. For the first few days, neither of us liked the floor at all. We were kind of sad about it. It didn't help that after removing everything from the kitchen it was painfully obvious that all of the walls needed to be repainted, the baseboards needed work, the appliances and kitchen carts were filthy on the sides and back, and everything in general just looked tired and scuffed up.

With everything out of the way we took the opportunity to do some fixing up. First, I gave our kitchen carts and appliances a thorough cleaning on the sides and backs that aren't usually accessible. After that I washed, sanded, and repainted the kitchen walls. We also sanded, caulked, painted, and added quarter round trim to the baseboards. Alex also replaced a seriously old light switch with a nice, shiny, new one.

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

With everything repainted, cleaned, and put back together I do have to say that the floors look a lot better than they did before. Do I love them? No. Does Alex love them? No. But do we like them now? Yeah, we're getting used to them. :)

P.S. It's hard to tell in the photos but in person you can in fact see the lines in between the large, rectangular tiles as well as some subtle texture on each tile.

Now let's take a look at the before and after pictures. Here is a picture of the original linoleum flooring:

And here is a picture of the vinyl flooring installed over top:

What do you think? Do you like the before or after better? For me, it definitely feels crisper and cleaner in there and a lot less dingy. Yay for a less dingy kitchen!!!!

Wanna hear some other fun news? We have two boxes of white subway tiles and two lengths of butcher block counter sitting in our basement right now. Our kitchen quick fixes aren't done yet. The idea is to spruce up this side of our oogly kitchen next:

Someday soon I will be saying goodbye to that green and white laminate. Triple yay!!!