Cottages call for low-maintenance flooring

Tag : Cement Shoes
Cottages call for low-maintenance flooring Tough, simple products will mean less work when you're supposed tobe just having fun July 12, 2008

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Steve Maxwell
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Sometimes your choice of floor covering is about more than justappearance and cost. It's about your mental health.
This is especially true of cottages and other structures meant forrelaxed, leisure-time lifestyles. In situations like these, theflooring you choose exerts a powerful influence on how much you endup enjoying your place. And success or failure often boils down tosomething I call the floor's "easygoing quotient."
Tough, simple floor coverings that resist damage and continue tolook good even when they're less than perfectly clean have a highEGQ. They're easy to get along with and don't make you wince everytime someone walks in with gritty shoes. This is exactly the kindof floor you use in a cottage, casual entranceway or leisure room,though it often doesn't work out this way.
The temptation to install some highfalutin, expensive,high-maintenance floor covering with a low EGQ is powerful,especially when you've got grand hopes for a place and want it tolook "nice." The long-term effect, however, is anythingbut nice. Overly fancy floors often create a constant level ofmental background tension for years to come as the next scratch,ding or scuff is nervously anticipated. How can you relax with thatgoing on in your head?
One of the reasons fancy floors make you crazy is that they'reexpensive to install and often impossible to repair. This is why Ilike simple wood floors. For rustic situations they're theultimate, easygoing floor choice, costing only about $1 per squarefoot for materials. Just nail down ordinary one-by-six pine, thensweep the wood clean if, and when, you feel like it.
The only drawback with bare wood is dust. Sometimes it's hard tosweep it all off, though there is a way around this. If you want toget a little fancier without endangering your sanity, treat yourrustic wood floor with tung oil. It soaks right into the surface,so it can't flake off. And when the inevitable scratches and wearexpose fresh lumber, just daub on some more oil. In time, this kindof oiled wood floor develops a delightful patina as foot trafficburnishes the surface.
If you don't mind investing more work in the process, mortar makesa very cheap, sanity-preserving, super-tough flooring choice,especially for an entranceway that's likely to get wet. Add anadditional layer of five-eighths-inch plywood over top of yourexisting subfloor, then apply a layer of tar paper and expandedmetal lath to the ply. Install 1 1/2-inch-tall strips of woodaround the perimeter of the floor to guide the travel of atwo-by-four for smoothing the mortar. Mix up a batch using one partPortland cement and three parts clean sand (adding a coloured dyeif you want), then shovel it onto the floor and draw thetwo-by-four across to smooth it. Let the mortar cure for three orfour days and you're good to go.
Until recently I never would have included sheet-style flooring ina list of easygoing options for cottage use. Bad experiences withbubbling, lifting and noisy vinyl flooring is the reason. But noneof these is a problem with a sheet flooring product I've beentesting. It's called FiberFloor (450-293-8216 or Google FiberFloorto find a store where it's sold) and it's unusual in several ways.
First of all, it goes down without any adhesive in mostapplications. This is possible because FiberFloor is so veryfloppy. It just sits there, flat against the underlying subfloor,held in place only by perimeter baseboard. FiberFloor is alsoastonishingly tough, as I've been discovering since March. That'swhen I put samples of the product down in the entranceway of myworkshop, with instructions to my kids to go hard on it. They're inand out of the place all the time, constantly tracking in sharpgrit from the limestone screenings on our driveway. The FiberFloorhas come through absolutely unscathed.
The product is even recommended for use in basements that floodfrom time to time. Since it's completely impervious to water (andnot glued down), just roll it up, let everything dry, then roll itback down again.
Worry-free floors aren't ideal everywhere, but when you want toreally kick back and relax, it sure is nice to have a place whereyou can leave your shoes on and your fretting behind.
Sign up for Steve Maxwell's homeowner newsletter at www.stevemaxwell.ca . Steve Maxwell, technical editor of Canadian Home Workshop , appears Saturdays in New in Homes.