Choosing Between Pergo and Cork For The Kitchen Floors

Houston, we have liftoff! We made a big kitchen purchase. We ordered the floor! Wait, we should back up. We originally hoped to find hardwood floors running all the way under the linoleum in the kitchen (after finding out that it ran under the fireplace side of the room here)…

… but we took out the transition between the kitchen and the office on the other side of the room to find… booo!… plywood. So no refinishing for us. Gotta start from scratch.

But there were a few limitations off the bat. We learned from the previous owners that the kitchen floors could not handle tile (they would need to be reinforced/leveled from underneath = $$$), so tile was out. Even laying down new hardwood worried us since it is thick and heavy and not as flexible as some other options. So based on the limitations, we honed in on these three options (any of which we hoped to install ourselves if we chose it):

• cork
• floating wood laminate like Pergo
• vinyl or linoleum/marmoleum

At first we enjoyed the idea of laying some sort of sleek eco-friendly linoleum in some chic tone-on-tone stripes. Candice Olsen does it sometimes, but I could not find any online pics. And I am sure it sounds truly tacky but I promise it looked truly good and that lady spends five thousand dollars on sconces so she’s not exactly about compromising when it comes to form. But after checking out a ton of local places /online stores we simply could not find anything that we liked. And we did not want to give off that “we upgraded the whole kitchen but forgot to update the floors effect” (which is a fairly embarrassing result if you do, in fact, upgrade the floors but no one can tell).

So we were glad to move on from the whole striped linoleum thing. We also realized that we prefer when our floors fall back and let other things be the star (like the wall paint, textiles on the chairs & windows, light fixtures, art & accessories – etc). Next was the possibility of: 1) a Pergo type wood-look click floor or 2) cork (since it was substantially lighter than hardwood and even bamboo). So we looked at a bunch of options in both materials and zeroed in on two options that we liked best.

One was a whitewashed Pergo from Lowe’s (for $3 a square foot called “Driftwood Pine”) that looked so much like the hardwoods we already had in the house, except whitewashed – which could have been a lively choice for the kitchen. The planks were the same size as the existing ones and it still had warm wood tones underneath so it would nearly look like we had the same hardwood running through the kitchen that we had in the office, dining room, and bedrooms, but chose to whitewash them in the kitchen.

The other option was a rich mocha cork from Lumber Liquidators (called “Porto” by Libson Cork) that was on especially sale for $3.26 a square foot. Which is an excellent price since cork typically starts around $4 or $5 a square foot and can go all the way up to $10+.

We realized we might have initially been attracted to the whitewashed Pergo because it is similar in tone to the existing vinyl flooring in our kitchen (so our eyes are simply used to seeing that tone underfoot), but once we paint the cabinets white and add stainless appliances and make a bunch of other upgrades, we realized that we might appreciate a warmer toned floor (so the whole room would not be white and gray). Boom, option one was effectively eliminated. Buh-bye graywashed Pergo.

The funny thing was that when we checked out nearly all of the inspiration kitchens that I pinned on Pinterest, they all had one thing in common: rich dark floors. Talk about subliminal messages. Cannot believe we did not pick up on that sooner. They were in fact similar in tone to the mocha hardwood ones that we brought in to our first kitchen, which we still miss on the daily. Oh and it bears mentioning that while some folks prefer lighter wood for shows-less-dust reasoning, we never had any issues with that (or keeping them clean in general) since they were not especially dark/ebony, simply deep sufficient to be called “mocha.”

Decision made. Mocha cork it is! Especially since we planned to refinish the existing hardwoods in a similar tone for an even more seamless whole-house feeling down the line. But before pulling the cork trigger we googled around for cork pros and cons – simply to be thorough. We learned it is warm, quiet, naturally fire & water & bacteria resistant, soft underfoot (for less dish breakage and sore knees from standing), and eco friendly. The cons were that the finish could be scratched (like hardwoods) and it could be dented over time by heavy appliances or furniture if you do not put those felt feet on them (like hardwoods). But if scratched or dented it could be sanded down and even restained and resealed (yup, you guessed it – like hardwoods). So it did not sound too out of our league since we are certainly not strangers to oak flooring, which is apparently fairly similar.

But because we are neurotic, we took it one step crazier further. We emailed four people we know and enjoy who have cork and asked them to be brutally honest with us and tell us what they hate and if they’d recommend it and what they’d change and all the bad stuff. Well, not a complaint among them. Everyone said they enjoyed their cork and would make the same choice again. Whew. So we (at last) went for it.

We put in an order for 265 square feet of it to cover the whole 25′ kitchen and adjoined laundry room (and account for about 10% of extra cork, simply in case of a catastrophe cork-tastrophe). Of course I haggled with the Lumber Liquidators guy to get $15 off our $863 cork order (down to $848, baby). Haha. Every penny helps. It is certainly not a drop in the bucket, but we are excited to install it ourselves (it should be fairly plain since it is click + lock and does not call for any adhesive). The excellent thing is that refinishing hardwoods typically runs around $3-4 a square foot around here, and our new floors were $3.26 a square foot – so we are psyched that new cork floors are about the same price as refinishing what we wished we had found under that old linoleum. In the words of Clara: yoi! (that is how she says yay).

The only ironic thing: installing the floor is one of the last things we will be tackling (floors typically go down last so they do not get dinged up by demo or painting or appliance installing) but the price was right so we pounced! For anyone wondering what we have to get done before cork-ing things up, here is a brief rundown:

• Switch out/alter some of the existing cabinets & relocate some appliances
• Order/install new appliances (since we have some bisque mixed with black going on)
• Open the doorway between the dining room & kitchen (still working on permits/contractors)
• Create a peninsula out of secondhand, built, or purchased cabinetry
• Upgrade the counters (possibly with some Hands-on concrete ones if the floor can support them)
• Redo the backsplash (we have something fairly lively planned… more on that later)
• Paint the old and new cabinets white, so they look pleasant and seamless
• Add some open shelving (that’ll go along with our lively TBA backsplash idea)
• Fully upgrade the lighting (goodbye florescent tube lights!)

So yeah… we might not have after kitchen pictures for you until 2013. Simply kidding. But perhaps not. Have you folks purchased flooring lately? Gone crazy for cork? Or whitewashed wood (or faux wood)? Or realized that there is a subliminal common thread among all of the kitchens you’ve been pinning on Pinterest? It was kind of hilarious when we noticed they all had nearly identical floors.