Finally! And it’s Beautiful! And Happy Halloween!

Yesterday, we had our marmoleum kitchen floor installed and we love it. It’s completely worth not having a refrigerator in the kitchen for the next 36 hours while it continues doing whatever it’s doing before we seal it Wednesday night. We do have a fridge in the garage though, so that is helpful. I’m just not doing much cooking for the next couple of days. Again, though, completely worth it!

The Details
I seriously thought this would never happen. We started by going to Marion’s Carpets, which stocks marmoleum and in the beginning, seemed that they would be easy to work with. Nope. Now, perhaps carpet through them is fine, but trying to get Marmoleum purchased and installed through Marion’s was like trying to get the kitchen floor covered in gold, with the work only being able to be completed by exotic and highly-skilled, yet surly circus animals. Also, Marion’s was very bad at returning phone calls. In addition, we had to put a deposit down for materials before we could get an estimate (we got this back). Oh and they are overpriced. Blah.

Plus, the contractor they sent out never left us with a bid sheet or an estimate of his costs — we just got the cost for the marmoleum (about $800!!?). While trying to get an answer as to why the estimate was so high, our salesman asked if jwa (the male) was home while the measurements were taken on the kitchen. Because, I kid you not, as a female, apparently, I may not have noticed if the contractor had accidentally measured the dining room and the living room as well. Uh. Okay. Buh-bye, Marion’s. You suck.

We next tried to get a few basic installation estimates from other contractors but without much luck. Why is it so hard to find someone who is bonded, reliable and knows what they are doing?

The marmoleum sits in the dining room…waiting

Finally, we turned to (and should have used from the beginning) Linoleum City. Their Marmoleum prices are about $10 less per square yard than Marion’s. Plus, they work with Dave from DJs Floors for installation, who, in a word, is awesome. Our materials costs came to about $450 through Linoleum City — oh, don’t ask me how the hell the Marion’s contractor measured — I’m just a girl!

About a 1/3 done…Hooray!

Dave and his son came early Monday morning and patched up the old floor where it was coming up and covered the whole floor lightly with a cement-like topping. Let it dry and scuffed it up so the Marmoleum adhesive would have something to hold on to well. Then, they started to put the Indian Summer floor down.

Almost there!

Another good thing is that DJ’s Floors is bonded and insured. Seems like a given but you’d be surprised at how many contractors we met with that were not. This is a good source for finding out that information (in Oregon — I’m sure every state has this type of information online, you should seek it out).

So, we will be eating out the next couple of days (Detour Cafe for Breakfast on Monday and PokPok for dinner that night — basement dining room opening in about a month, by the way. Oh and the new lamb skewer special is really good!)

The kitchen when we first bought the house (almost) 4 years ago and now. The counter tops are the next to go.

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