VCT flooring in kitchen?

[ArchitectureEnthusiast]

Hello,

I hope I'm not re-posting. I did a search on VCT & didn't come up with anything. I've also gotten a lot of good information on VCT on the lottaliving.com site. I was wondering if anyone has installed VCT in a kitchen? We are considering Fortress White VCT for the kitchen, breakfast, & laundry. I think it will blend well with the terazzo & give a period-appropriate, clean, and modern look in our MCM kitchen. I also think it will hold up well to traffic, but I'm worried about maintenance. From what I've read, I think I can deal with an annual buffing & weekly/monthly polish application. Does anyone have an opinion?

Thanks!

[apower]

We have been flip flopping on whether we want to deal with maintaining VCT. Armstrong makes an upgraded version of the VCT that costs about 3 times as much requires no yearly (or biannual) buffing like the VCT. If you don't have/rent your own machine the estimate to get that done ends up being the same or slightly more than the VCT installed. So in theory, getting the better grade VCT product would pay for itself in 2-3 years versus the maintenance on regular VCT. Having said that we may just scrap the whole thing and go for cork.

[Subdude]

What is VZT flooring?

[musicman]

Hello,

I hope I'm not re-posting. I did a search on VCT & didn't come up with anything. I've also gotten a lot of good information on VCT on the lottaliving.com site. I was wondering if anyone has installed VCT in a kitchen? We are considering Fortress White VCT for the kitchen, breakfast, & laundry. I think it will blend well with the terazzo & give a period-appropriate, clean, and modern look in our MCM kitchen. I also think it will hold up well to traffic, but I'm worried about maintenance. From what I've read, I think I can deal with an annual buffing & weekly/monthly polish application. Does anyone have an opinion?

Thanks!

the stuff lasts forever. my parents just put it in a few months ago in another house they own. maintenance-wise it isn't bad. sometimes if the furniture you put on it is too heavy it will make indentations.

[ArchitectureEnthusiast]

VCT is Vinyl Composition Tile. It's a commercial flooring product that is available in 12x12 tiles and is installed with an adhesive to your sub-floor. We were originally planning to do cork planks. I have cork in my current kitchen & LOVE it. The only problem is that it fades in the sunlight. Also, the less expensive cork patterns are way too yellow for the kitchen I'm remodelling. The samples looked terrible (I was very disappointed). There are cream & white versions of the cork, but I'm worried about the sunlight fade as well as the "wet area" in the laundry room.

[GoAtomic]

VCT= Vinyl Composition Tile. You know, the stuff in grocery stores

Actually, I'm actually in the process of installing these tiles in my kitchen, utility and breakfast rooms chosen because ... well, that's what was originally in my 1960 ranch house. I wanted this tile also because it should be much easier on the feet than other flooring materials, and a vintage dish dropped on ceramic or wood doesn't stand a chance of surviving.

I bought Armstrong VCT Imperial Excelon brand at Home Depot for 68 cents/sq. ft. (plus glue, which is cheaper at Lowe's), black with white brushstrokes in it, and it is almost a dead match for the stuff seen in a color photo of my parent's 1950 Bellaire bungalow back in the day.

Installation - You can install this. First, get professional advice on removing old floor, assuming it's vinyl, and don't let anybody grind off the old stuff. You do not want that dust in the your house from what i've heard. You can wet scrape (what i did) or just float over the existing. Floor has got to be smooth, as the vinyl will mold to any imperfections and show them up. You can float over the existing floor, but these are best stuck to concrete or wood. Since my floor originally had these tiles before I popped them loose, i haven't had to do too much concrete smoothing, but yours may vary.

One nice thing is these are thick enough and 12" square laser-cut, so you can quickly layout a test batch w/out glue to see what they'll look like. The accent color strokes on the Armstong tiles run one direction, and tradition holds that you alternate every other tile 90 degrees so you get an interesting pattern in the floor. You can also get really creative and do borders, pop in another color for accent, etc, if you want.

Upkeep - after I bought my tiles, I noticed that these particular tiles have a low sheen factory coating on one side, so you no longer have to put polish on them. But you can still polish if you want the terrazzo sheen. I plan to leave mine low sheen for a while once the floor is done and see how they hold up. Also, I chose black tiles because they won't show shoe marks, which White tiles will show almost instantly.

For easiest maintenance, go to an estate sale and pick up an old 2 brush floor buffer. They're compact, easily found and cheap, and usually were bought for buffing vinyl or hardwoods back then. (I know, my mom made me buff our floors with one when i was a kid).

If you want to see how good this can look, pick up the latest Atomic Ranch mag, with a cover pic of an Eichler house with new black VCT flooring in it. Turns out they used Congoleum brand tiles (www.congoleum.com) and their line has really cool small color flecks in it, possibly gold colored on the black tile. I like that look a bit better than my Armstrong, but the stuff has been bought so i'm not changing now.

Hope that helps !