apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

one office i worked at installed cork flooring throughout some medium traffic spaces including a kitchenette. i must say the aroma for the first 6 months was delicious as it smells smoky and woody, but the smell eventually dissipated. the flooring came with explicit instructions. the floor was never to be cleaned with a wet mop. we thenfigured out why, when a day after a small in-office happy hour we found small round swellings in the cork floor. these were from small droplets of condensation from the cold beer. they never went away.
another problem we found was when we used a small ladder to change a lamp on a high lighting fixture. the entire operation took 3 minutes at most, yet the half inch diameter base of the ladder indented the floor, and as you can guess, it never returned to it's original shape.
in conclusion, the floor looked great, but was way to delicate to be considered desirable as we had a wonderful finish for less than a month. i can't imagine many spaces that beat up the floor much less than we do, so unless it was installed wrongly, i apologize to all the clients i specified this flooring for. besides we still don't know if cork trees can really qualify as a renewable resource since it may or may not really be able to fully grow within those ten years.

someone please regain my interest in this product.

mig - thanks for your candid remarks about cork flooring. I've been trying to sell my husband on it for our kitchen flooring but he has been unconvinced, and now I think with good reason. That would be all I need - my old dog peeing on the kitchen cork floor and then having a warped spot to remind me of the accident long after she's gone. Plus - what if a glass of water got spilled? Pasta water overboiling? Too many mishaps in a kitchen for cork!

Cork is incredible as a floor. Mig, I'm surprised that water did that.. When I put cork floors in my front hallway about 6 years ago, they came as 12x12 tiles that we glued down. Once they were in place I coated them with a polyeurathane(cant spell) type finish. Once the three coats of poly were done, no water was absorbed. We didn't even use a rug. water and salt from shoes did not absorb in.

I think its a great material. We're actually thinking about doing it on our back porch/family room. Maintain it like wood-sweep and mop, forgiving like carpet.

I have cork throughout my house, including the kitchen -- you can see the floor in a couple of the shots in the post at the link below. It's been down for about 2 years and so far has stood up to the abuse of 2 people and a black lab puppy. Mig, I wonder what, if any finish, your office cork floor had on it. Mine has oil, which is supposedly less moisture resistant than polyurethane. I did drop a cabinet on it while working on the kitchen, and there are a few scratches here and there, but the pattern of the cork is busy enough that the damage just blends in.

- Jonathan

http://chicago.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/green-ideas/green-confessional-on-a-budget-compromise-affords-indulgence-024939

As a bit of a sidenote, cork as an agriculture practice helps protect quite a few endangered species (http://pricephotos.net/environment/cork/htm/corkintro.htm), so it is better to go with bottles that have a cork instead of plastic opener (which doesn't degrade).

okay so i have a question about cork flooring. my mom had hardwood that is COMPLETELY ruined by these things:
1. Dog pee-pee - very skittish pets
2. Plants (sister didn't put one of those plate things underneath and just watered away...)
3. Washing machine over flowing (don't buy an electronic one...)
4. Rain gutter got clogged and busted and flooded the part of the wood by the back door
5. A/C and water heater somehow flooded.

#3 and 4 have made it so bad the wood has pulled up and is curling up off the slab.

She thinks concrete would be more expensive. But the kind of hardwood she has has been discontinued and she bought up the rest of it before it was and has only enough left for one room - the one room in the house that has carpet.

Both daughters and their respective amnimules have moved out so there is one Mama and two dawgies.

*scuse me not electronic, DIGITAL

we used a mineral oil as stated in the manufacturer's instructions, which we followed in great detail. I even had to translate and explain to the cleaners in great detail. the water swells happened when the water droplets went unnoticed that evening and left overnight. standing water on cork is a big no no and we knew that, but didn't expect small droplets to cause so much harm overnight. the swells aren't that noticeable to most people since there's no direct lights shinning on the floor, but to architects, these imperfections are heartbreaking. i think it's a great product if you're willing to maintain it diligently, which may just be a great way to force yourself to keep the floor clean at all times.

I like the cork floors in my kitchen, but not nearly as much as I love the marmoleum in my bathroom. If I were to redo the kitchen floors, I'd go with that in a heartbeat.

My problem with cork is less about the water (I'm not sure mine are as thoroughly sealed, but it's small and I am paranoid about water), but my dog's nails constantly scratch the heck out of the surface. Part of this is my fault (I should trim her nails more often), part of this is the color (it's dark chocolate cork) and part of this is the material. Again, I have had no problems with the equally dark marmoleum.

I'm just getting ready to do the tunneling for a skylight over the kitchen -- I'm dreading what scratches on the floor will look like when the light hits it!

I'm surprised by Mig's comments about cork being too delicate. I lived for several years in a 1929 art deco apartment building that had the original cork floors, and they were beautiful. Just to die for. They were well worn, it's true, and not perfectly smooth or even-colored. But they had a great sheen, were great sound absorbers, and seemed really hardy. Oh, and did I mention how warm and beautiful they looked?

We have cork floors in our kitchen (sealed with three coats of some natural sealer) and no problems yet. When my mom was young and lived in London, she also lived in an apartment that had cork floors that were at least 50 years old--and when I mentioned I was going to have cork floors, which I thought she would think was weird, she was all for it.

Speaking to the processing question (by way of addressing off-gassing), here's a quotation from the Build It Green website:

"The process of agglomerating the cork requires binders to hold the ground cork granules together. Binders typically used include urea melamine, phenol formaldehyde, and natural proteins, which are relatively stable binders once processed."

It seems that suberin is a complex polymer with awesome properties; unfortunately, though, it doesn't act like play-doh.

Still, cork is renewable and (let's hope) sustainable--much better than new hardwood!