New Cork Floor

We did this in March but thought it was a worthy post for WCD.

After months of planning, Zach sacrificed most of this past weekend to install our new laundry room cork flooring. He and I tackled the removal of our existing linoleum flooring on Saturday afternoon and then a good friend, Ian, came in on Sunday and installed the new cork with Zach. Thank goodness for Ian's help! We couldn't have done it without him :)

Bye, bye, nasty linoleum

Yuck!  Time to go.

Ian and Zach laying in the first row.

Job well done boys.   We are back in business.

Ceramic Infused Cork plank flooring...aahhh!

We purchased the cork planks through Sustainable Flooring in Boulder, Colorado. The warmth and acoustic value of our new laundry room flooring was immediately apparent. Read below for more specific information on the cork itself.

Sustainability Benefit:

Cork from Portugal is sustainable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is rapidly renewable, being that the bark of the tree is peeled from the trunk, and then tree is left to regenerate. This provides an almost limitless supply of cork bark, assuming that once the tree is beyond its’ useful life, replacements are planted (which they are). This heavily protected species also carries with it tremendous mechanical and functional properties, most of which are related to the fact that the cork bark is made almost entirely of cellular pockets of air (200 million cells per cubic inch). These cells of trapped air inhibit the passage of sound (making it one of the best acoustic insulators known), and are known as a thermal insulator, separately an often cold floor from the warmth of your foot. In addition, cork is anti-microbial, has tremendous “bounce-back” properties and forgiveness, and offers one of the greatest slip resistances of any natural material. Despite common wine industry myths, cork availability increases every year (despite minor ups and downs related to weather), and is one of the true really sustainable raw materials in its unaltered state.
Sustainable Flooring uses “ceramic” and “atomic” finishes (enabling extremely high-traffic commercial use)

Organic wax coating applied to all sides of the T&G (for added moisture resilience)

Offers tremendous slip resistance (unmatched with any other mosaic)

Sustainable Flooring only sources cork from Portugal (not China, where the cork forests are not mature enough to provide the inherent benefits in the cork material)

Core material in planks is CARB-compliant (E0)