FLOOR IT!

I've been around the design block a few times and thought I'd seen it all until Joe and I arrived at the intersection of Want and Need.  I want it to be beautiful (in this case, our kitchen) but we need it to be done now and don't have time to find something that's just right (a mistake, I think, many make in renovating..at the point when you're totally over it is when most mistakes are made because you just want it done! My suggestion..put the brakes on! It's your house...take the time to make it exactly what you want!).  The top photo (not to be confused with the cover of Newsweek's shot of a bombed-out building in Beirut!) is our kitchen that was in desperate need of a fast floor make-over (the red painted plywood, according to our Realtors, isn't a good selling point!) We've saved this task until the very end so when it came to decision making time Joe wanted to burn the house down and I wanted children from Chili to hand-stencil gold leaf squares on a diagonal line.  So, we needed a middle ground.  When Joe announced he loved "Marmoleum" I wasn't sure what Jam had to do with our kitchen floors until he explained that it is an "earth-friendly linoleum." After contemplating a break-up (how on earth had I wound up with someone who'd consider a Linoleum product in anything but a travel trailer??) I decided to put on the brakes, open my mind and explore the option: Marmoleum is  produced from renewable materials like linseed oil, wood flour, rosin, jute and limestone, is fairly inexpensive and easy to install (cut it, spread the glue,roll it out, grab a heavy relative to sit on it and you're done).  So, we sped over to our local flooring store and ordered it.  Our kitchen smells like the lobby in a nursing home, but it's done!

TIME TO COMPLETE TASK: Three days to order, one to install

COST: $3.95/square foot

STRESS LEVEL: Low