I’ll admit that my skills sometimes fail me when I’m trying to tell wood and really good laminate apart by just looking. Some laminate flooring (Wilsonart’s, for example) looks as woody as can be. What usually clinches it for me is those tiny gaps–laminate planks tend to fit together snugly while older wood planks are just slightly less than perfect. My deductive system isn’t perfect, however, and both types of flooring can look truly spectacular.

So which flooring material would win in a cage match? According to this chart from Floor Facts, there are strengths and weaknesses on either side. Laminate floors are extremely impact-, scratch-, burn-, fade-, and stain-resistant. Wood, on the other hand, is easier to repair and tends to look that much nicer. Laminate cannot be refinished but it’s easy to install. Wood lasts longer, but isn’t always DIY friendly.

If two flooring types enter the cage, but only one can leave, I think that wood would emerge as the victor, simply because it looks good and it lasts (and lasts and lasts). My grandparents live in a home built in an early nineteenth century barn, and both the dining room floor and the kitchen island were built using wood from the original threshing room floor. After many, many years, that wood is still as warm and as beautiful as ever.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but the entire second floor of my home is right now nothing more than an overlarge attic. Nothing lives up there, outside of a spider plant, a succulent, an aloe plant, and some parsley, and they are only segregated from the rest of the house because our cats have a fondness for makeshift salads. This barren wasteland of a level will eventually become a full bath and two rooms for children, which means that between now and then I get to pick out all manner of fanciful things with which to cover floors and walls and windows.

If I remember myself correctly, I would have been ga-ga for solid wood puzzle flooring as a kid. For the grownups out there, it’s easy to install, as the company that produces it sends it to the buyer as a pre-measured kit. According to the site, the polyurethane and aluminum oxide finish is one of the most wear resistant hardwood finishes you’ll find anywhere. Best of all, the wood is sourced from Certified Managed Forests, meaning that the wood used to manufacture each puzzle floor will be replaced by new trees.

I like wood floors. To a lesser extent, I like floors that are practically indistinguishable from wood. I like tile floors a teensy-weensy bit, but not all that much. And I don’t particularly like linoleum at all.

Not that there’s any in my house. The middle floor of my home is all wood except for the shoddily installed vinyl in the kitchen and the shoddily installed tiles in the bathroom. Someday I’m going to call up the previous owners to ask them why they chose to DIY without first learning how to properly DIY. Then I’m going to rip everything up and replace it with some nice wood that matches all of the other flooring. Problem solved.

That said, I’m always open to exploring new flooring ideas, and when I came across Forbo Mamoleum I thought, all right, I’ll have a look. Marmoleum linoleum is all natural, made from linseed oil, wood flour, rosin, jute and limestone, and lined with cork.

Pros:

• It’s easy to install oneself, it’s simple to maintain, and it’s eco-friendly.
• You can design and install your own pattern, so long as your chosen pattern uses primarily cubes and rectangles. Or you can get a custom floor based on a design you create.

Cons:

• The color in the DIY range is sorely limited. There’s black but no white! And they don’t give you much information regarding the fancier design options.
• It still looks like the floor of my elementary school cafeteria because of the swirly pattern of the individual pieces — does it have to be swirly?

Methinks that Forbo is trying to expand its customer base from the commercial to the public arenas. I don’t know how successful they’re going to be. I don’t know about you, but I think that Marmoleum, for all it’s colors and wacky patterns and greenness, just looks too darned industrial.

Glinda brought a certain Jonathan Roubini to my attention in the not so distant past, via a link to an article in the LA Times. While I just can’t seem to wrangle a working perma-link that’ll lead you to the article, I can sum the whole thing up thusly: Awesome freakin’ rugs.

Pay attention where you’re stepping these day. A trend may be underfoot. A new category of high-end contemporary rugs is emerging: graphic illustrations of sex, drugs and other not-so-PG themes rendered by designers who look to the floor as an uncensored canvas.

Roubini’s The Kiss is hand knotted using wool and silk, and is available in standard and custom sizes…for a goodly price, of course.

Sex and drugs aside, I really do like the illustrative rugs I’m seeing more and more these days. My fondness for Oriental carpets cannot be trumped, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t mind laying down something artful and sumptuous on my bare wood floors. (Lest you think I’m being stingy, there are more pretty pics below the cut.)

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