We decided to get Marmoleum Click [Danish | North American], because we wanted something eco-friendly to cover our hardwood. I like hardwood, but this stuff was not in good condition, and it would have needed a great deal of work to make it non-ugly. We considered bamboo, and cork, but Marmoleum won out because we could make our floor in pretty colors. Then I had a flash of brilliance: let's make our floor out of tetrominos! The fact that my husband agreed just reinforces my belief that I married the best man on Earth. Read more about the design and prep. Comment about the floor.
Getting the tiles
We received the tiles from Tæppeland on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at about 10:30am. When I say "we" I mean "I" because Thomas was at work. We were told they would come in the afternoon, so I could call and let Thomas know, and he'd leave work a bit early to help me carry them up. Delivery around here does not include taking the stuff up to the third floor and into our apartment; the delivery guy and I carried the tiles from his truck into the apartment building, just inside the front door. Did I mention I was in my bathrobe? Oh, and the delivery guy didn't speak English. I couldn't have Thomas leave work that early, so I just carried them up myself. All 37 boxes. I could only carry two at a time for any appreciable length of time, and I took them up one flight at a time. When all the boxes were piled one flight up, I took a break (and a shower) and then went the next flight. Another break, and the last set of lugging ended with the boxes in the living room, sorted by color.
They are supposed to sit in
room temperature for a few days before being put down,
since they've been sitting in a warehouse for a while. We
wanted to wait for the weekend anyway, so there they sat.
Laying the Tiles: Day 1
On Saturday, September 15, we decided to see what we could do without any help.
The tetrominos we had so far:
At this point, Thomas wanted to
stop in case we needed to move the floor around a bit. We
didn't have the tools to cut partial tiles yet, so we
couldn't complete it ourselves. Wanna see more pics of the work?
Laying the Tiles: Day 2
Saturday, September 16, Thomas' dad, Poul-Erik came over to help. Our friend, Martin, was supposed to show, and Poul-Erik wanted to wait for him before we did anything. When Martin arrived, he suggested removing the baseboards. After some discussion, we decided to do it. While the guys did that, I made tacos for lunch. When I was done with the tacos, they were about 75% done pulling off baseboards.
After a taco break, I set to
work making ordered stacks of tiles and the guys started to
lay them down. Thomas' older brother, Michael, stopped by
to help a bit later as well. We got everything done that
does not require being sawed. I had hoped to finish the
floor completely, but I was not expecting the baseboards to
be removed, so I think we did quite well! Furniture is
moved back in so we can live our lives until we have time
to saw a bunch of tiles. Poul-Erik is going to help us
install new baseboards as well. I'm very happy with the
results! Plus, the measurements we used (from our realtor)
were wrong, and we do not need the last row of tiles we had
planned for. This means that, together with the extras from
having to order multiples of seven, we have enough to do
the foyer too! But not today.
Our Mostly Complete Tetris Floor!
See more pics of the floor
and the installation!
Our Time-Lapse Video is Up!
Eco-Friendly?
Treehugger.com has a couple of articles (like this one and this one) about Marmoleum (which I how I found out about this stuff), but not about Marmoleum Click. The regular Marmoleum is put on square tiles (they have rectangular ones too, but we didn't use any) made from HDF and cork. Still looks pretty eco-friendly to me. No glue, staples, or nails are required, which is great too.
One thing I didn't like, though, is they put a set of instructions (in 11 languages) in every single box, and neither the instructions nor the boxes themselves appear to be made from recycled or tree-free sources. We don't need 40 copies of instructions, in 9 more languages than we speak. It would be nice if Forbo would jump on the make-it-a-PDF-on-our-website bandwagon, or supply their dealers with a handful to pass out to each customer with an order of the tiles.
Regardless, all boxes and sets of instructions will be recycled now even if they weren't before.
