[Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by my daughter, Grace Pardun Alworth (her real name). She and her husband, Jim (also his real name) have been faithful readers of Gary’s Fix since the beginning. Any good ideas you read in this post probably came from Gary’s Fix articles. The rest of it, not so much.]

The hubster and I looked at the ugly floor in our hip, new farmhouse-inspired kitchen and said, “Ew. We should rip this out!” fairly regularly for about a year.  Then we finally ripped it out. Then we said, “Ew. We should finish this floor!” fairly regularly for an additional year.

Finally, on our 8th anniversary, we went to Big Bob’s Flooring (yes, this is a real place), and talked to Ryan (I was disappointed it wasn’t Big Bob himself.  In fact, Ryan was quite petite.)  He advised us to hire a professional to install a sheet of fancy vinyl. He proceeded to tell us about the horrors of peel-and-stick tiles and the mishaps naïve and motivated new homeowners like ourselves combatted. Ryan (not Big Bob) suggested that not only would the warranty protect the flooring, it would even protect our marriage.

“That’s a fairly compelling sales pitch you have there, Not Big Bob,” I conceded.  “Let’s run the numbers.”  Not Big Bob ran the numbers, and, well, let’s just say the hubster and I decided to continue our search.

Our quest took us to a big box store, where we found peel-and-stick black and white vinyl tiles for 67 cents a square foot.  The warranty only covers the tiles, but the hubster and I agreed, “We’ll take our chances.”

We are not professionals, but we did read the instructions on the box, which basically qualifies us to be professionals.

Our previous kitchen flooring was actually a half an inch of 60 years-worth of flooring on top of a hardwood subfloor.  The top layer was a sheet of linoleum that, even against Not Big Bob’s advice, was probably installed by naïve and motivated young homeowners.  If the Continue reading How to install a kitchen floor and stay married →