A Floor is Like An Onion

A floor is like an onion because it is made up of layers. The floor beams, the sub floor, the real floor, etc. etc. When we moved into our house, we always knew that the kitchen floor had a few extra layers because you have to step up slightly when walking into the room.

Recently, Jeff decided to pull up the top layer of linoleum. Underneath that? Plywood... Underneath that? Linoleum. It is this wonderful pattern that I absolutely love!

Side note- when we bought this house we decided we wanted to keep it in the same time frame that it was built. It was built in 1962... However if you have seen previous posts we tend to lean towards the 1950's.

I wanted this cool vintage pattern of linoleum. The previous linoleum was dark and terrible! They covered up that cool pattern for this:
Cool 50's vintage Linoleum (Left) under the current blah linoleum (Right)



So the condition of the cool vintage pattern linoleum is not good. The pic I showed is pretty good but a lot of it has waxy buildup in the pattern creases and also it has holes from staples and some large cuts from getting the plywood removed from the floor... I had an idea of fixing the linoleum floor. So, I got to researching and found that Amazon sold a linoleum repair kit for $6 and thought it was worth a shot.

Turns out it is a lot harder than it sounds to repair linoleum.
Here is what I did:
First, cut out any discoloration, burnt, etc spots from linoleum.
Then, you put on this adhesive/floor leveler goo, let dry and add your tinted linoleum goo.
Let that dry. Put a piece of provided pattern paper over the semi-dried goo and heat up provided curing tool with the iron.
Place the curing tool on top of the paper and move in a circular pattern to harden the goo into your linoleum repair. If you remove the paper and the goo comes off, you start over and heat it longer.
I wish I had pics to show you!

Eventually, after the 5th try, I put the iron on top of a towel and "ironed on" the repair. The repair finally cured into a harden piece with the linoleum but unfortunately, it looks weird because my tinting skills were not up to par.

It would take me years to repair this floor but I can say that it was worth trying to save the floor for the $6 invested. However, I am looking for a new floor. Sigh. Maybe I should pull up this floor to see what it underneath that! Just kidding...