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Looking to re-do a badly updated kitchen in a Craftsman style home. The current floor is 80s ish. We wnat tpo get away from a hard new look and have the floor look as though it's been there a while so black and white tiles might look too contemporary. We are talking about black and white large tiles. 20-50s look.
Truly old-fashioned kitchen flooring would be wood. You can sand and stain original wood, install new wood, or paint the wood.
I have a friend whose house is well over 100 years old. Beautiful house. All original wood flooring. Her kitchen wood floor is painted, distressed painting with an interesting border and I think some type of grape pattern. It's very subdued and looks like it has been there for over 100 years. Very understated and elegant. One of the most beautiful kitchens I've ever seen.
Truly old-fashioned kitchen flooring would be wood. You can sand and stain original wood, install new wood, or paint the wood.
I have a friend whose house is well over 100 years old. Beautiful house. All original wood flooring. Her kitchen wood floor is painted, distressed painting with an interesting border and I think some type of grape pattern. It's very subdued and looks like it has been there for over 100 years. Very understated and elegant. One of the most beautiful kitchens I've ever seen.
It's not that old. The house was built in 1938. I have had a wood floor in a kitchen before and even if would never do it again with the type of traffic our kitchen gets.
The rest of the house has beautiful wood floors though, and under the ugly LR carpet there is a wood floor with inlay that is in dire need of refinishing.
I think the original floor was linoleum with a marble-ish pattern and a stripe abounf the edge the walls appear to be a sanitary green. Unuer the wallpaper.
1938 is old enough for wood floors to look original. You might not like it for kitchens but that's the type of floors kitchens had in the early 1900s. My girlfriend's floor would be perfect in a craftsman house. Her house is a mansion. If you paint it, the layers of finish help protect it. But the distressed paint look helps it look like it was meant to be when it wears down from heavy traffic. The reality is that a floor that looks like it has been there forever will be a floor that isn't perfect and has wear and tear.
By the 1930's linoleum was the floor covering most often chosen and recommended. Even in the 1920's linoleum was the flooring of choice if you could afford it. If not, you generally covered your kitchen floor with oilcloth.
Here's an ad from 1938. Most of the pics of 30's lino we see today tend to look rather busy, but compare this to the picture of the green kitchen and you'll see there was a wide choice of styles.
You can see several pages of Jane Powell's book - Linoleum on Google Books. I have a copy, and love looking at the patterns used over the decades.
If you don't want to do the black and white tile, you can do the wild linoleum designs.
This is a picture of a 1930s armstrong kitchen floor:
If you want to do black and white, don't do ceramic tile and definitely don't use large tiles.
Instead door the linoleum tiles. 12" square. Maybe an off-white for the white or a light beige to help give the appearance of old.
I like ALL of these. The little bit that remains looks like the paterned stuff. Where do you get that? It's in the closets of the house too. There is some tile on the walls, The cabs look 50s and are brown wood There is a picture on another forum but it won't let me upload it here.
We had a Mc Mansion during a lapse of sanity in the early 2000s. We are fine now, thank you and back to loving and owning old homes. And living in them.
In the New House we had thw wood floors, granite cherry and stainless. We don't want anything that even riminds us of that anymore.
There are pictures of this house on the Architecture Forum(Warren Zee) and Unexplained Mysteries and Paranormal. ( under Sheena)
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