The Forever Floor
Hello. I love your magazine but I have a question about the floor. I’m disabled. I have several diseases in my back and it’s impossible for me to sweep. I can push a broom, like the swiffer sweeper types. My son has to do the sweeping for me now, and my husband and I would like to find a way that I can do it myself. We are in the process of remodeling and I ran across this article by David Lee in issue #92. My husband got a scrap piece of the roofing and we painted it to see if the swiffer sweeper would go across it or not. Well, it works fine, but my question is how does he recommend mopping with this floor? I mean, I usually use the solution that comes in the swiffer. Will this hurt the paint? Will it clean my floor? Or do I have to use a regular mop with just water? Won’t the cleaners hurt the paint? I’m so sorry to bother you all, I know you must be terribly busy, but we’re trying to decide on this floor or regular linoleum. This floor would cost us $120.00 without the price of the paint, over $330. for the cheapest linoleum. We have a big kitchen and I do alot of canning and cooking in there, and have to clean the floor a lot. Any help would be so appreciated. God Bless you and your staff. And I do really enjoy your magazine. We live on our own little 2 1/2 acres of God’s beautiful land in southern Ohio. I raise most of our food in our garden and love to make homemade bread and can our goodies. Everyone loves my Christmas presents, they usually get canned goods or my famous homemade strawberry jam. Sorry I’m rambling. Any advice would be so appreciated. Thanks. Gail
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Gail,
The Forever Floor has been a popular floor covering solution since the article came out. www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/lee92.htmlarticle
I used the method for years on balconies and small decks. It wears very well when exposed to rain and snow.
We clean our indoor Forever Floors with bucket, mop and and whatever cleaning solution was on sale at the store. None have ever hurt the floor. We have not used the Swiffer solution but I doubt it would be a problem. I suggest you do a thorough test of the Swiffer, with its solution, on your sample of Forever Floor (smart thinking by the way) and see if anything bad happens. That should answer your cleaning question.
If you want extra protection on your kitchen floor you may consider using a high quality exterior latex deck paint for coats three and four of paint on your floor. This might increase resistance to wear and washing somewhat but most latex paint is washable.
When you and your menfolk install the Forever Floor be sure to follow the directions in the article very carefully, especially the part about using just enough, but not too much Plastic Roofing Cement. Too much makes the floor “mushy”, too little means the roofing won’t stick properly.
Since writing the article I have learned a couple more things about this flooring method that may help you. When the granules start to show and it is time to add new paint, you must thoroughly clean away any grease or oil and the floor must be very dry or some of the new paint will come off when exposed to water.
In the pictures of my version of the Forever Floor you may have noticed that I use a rather colorful mosaic pattern. This is for good reasons. It disguises little stains and wear marks. It allows me to only have to repaint the areas of the floor that get the most wear, postponing the need to redo the whole floor. If some damage occurs, like the time we gouged the floor when our refrigerator was moved, it is easier to disguise the repair with a mosaic theme.
One other thing. Oil paints would seem to be better for this floor method. I did a small section in my shop to see how it would work. It took three days for each coat to dry, all the while collecting dust on the sticky surface. One of our cats put paw prints in it. It did not level out very well around the granules. It made the floor slippery when wet. It got dull in the high traffic areas. It took 20 days (!!) to install but I finally tore it out because of its poor performance.
So Gail, I recommend that you install the flooring, give it two coats of mismatched paint, two coats of deck paint, then create a pattern of some kind in various colors, using less expensive latex paints, for the mosaics and get on to making all those goodies.
David Lee
