I Can't Believe it's Not Tile.

Six months ago I got a wild hair about my laundry room floor. I usually have a wild hair about something in my house. Remember when I said on any day my husband could come home from work only to find a wall torn down or put up.  A few years ago he was in Europe for the week and I laid new sod in the back yard....SURPRISE. Anyway, the floor in my laundry room was old ugly linoleum.  It had to go and had to go that day. I ran to Home Depot to buy tile only to realize I would have to  rip the old floor up to make it the right height. I started researching different options and found Stain Master peel and stick linoleum tiles. These thing are great. You need a ruler, a straight edge, and utility knife.  They are thin but sturdy and look just like tile. There is even a grout line.
I bought the flooring and brought it home.  Here's the great thing.  You measure, you cut and you stick it down.  Then you grout it,  it looks like tile. It's amazing really. This could be a long story about tiling but it's not, it's a long sob story about why I don't have this floor in my laundry room anymore and why I still love this stuff.

  I finished the laundry room it was beautiful, updated, freshly painted really nice.  We bought the house at the beach a few months later.  What to put on the faux brick linoleum in the bathroom....peel and stick tile right? I had just done the laundry room.  Julie had just done her pantry. That's Julie cutting the flooring.  Note the pedicured foot holding the straight edge.
  Look at that floor. I can't believe it's not tile.

Fast forward,  the beach house is almost done.  So I took the kids for a relaxing three days.  It was a beautiful weekend at the coast, no rain, no wind, and a lot of sun.  We had a great time.  I finished small projects the kids played.  We took off on Sunday afternoon.  My son, Matt, immediately fell asleep...weird.  Weird is right.  He ended up with a very bad flu,  high fever and guess what? A lot of vomiting.  It's important to note that my son is not a toddler.  He's 13 and 6 feet tall.  So more of a man boy really.  If he were to fall on me I might be crushed ;)

The way I look at vomiting in my house is like head lice.  I start washing everything. Even our bedding which is upstairs from his room. But wash it all is what I did while Matt slept, threw up, and slept some more. I washed the whole house.

Now what does this have to do with the laundry room floor?  Everything.  I'm walking down the stairs with an armful of laundry and what do I step in?  Not vomit, not poo. I stepped in a huge puddle of water!   @#$%^&*   I walked around the corner and found the laundry room completely flooded.  Water down the hall, into the bathroom and flowing like crazy.  A hose in the washing machine had literally exploded.  Someone asked me the other day what I couldn't fix. Washing machines is what I should have said.

I had every towel  in my house sopping it up, with Horizon Restoration on their way. In come the fans, out comes the floor... big tears, no joke. The next thing I know, they are starting to tear up my subfloor, then stop and say, "This looks like it has asbestos in it."   !@#$%^*  again.   Seriously another layer of old, ugly, orange linoleum.  I should have known.   It took a week to dry out and have the Hazmat team in the house.  (Asbestos is another thing I can't fix and won't mess with).
Remember when I was talking about the level of the floor? Well it comes's back into play. They took out two sheets of particle board and 2 layers of linoleum. Now the floor is too low to use my thin awesome peel and stick tile...rats.

Problem solved by continuing the Pergo from the hallway into the laundry room.  I think it looks nice and there isn't a difference in floor height.  Pergo goes in about as easily as the sticky tiles so it tuned out OK.  It's not the floor I had, but it will do.  I'm hoping for no flooding though as Pergo will soak up water like a sponge.


How much is that doggy in the window?