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Since my husband and I moved into a 95-year-old colonial one year ago, we’ve been chipping away at the remodel to-do list. The center of most of the action is the heart of the hole: the kitchen. We repainted the walls, refinished the oak cabinets in two tones, even retrofitted the cabinetry to install a dishwasher, and rounded out the French country storage vibes with a secondhand hutch. The next thing standing between me and my vision is the existing vinyl floors.
Carpet, hardwood, vinyl, and tile flooring.
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A Floor Straight Out of the ’70s
The current vinyl sheet flooring mimics a brick basket weave. Likely out of the ’70s, the rosy repetitive pattern is more kitschy than the realistic luxury vinyl plank (LVP) flooring options available today. The seams are peeling in some places and the paint drips leftover from my earlier projects aren’t helping. Suffice it to say, new flooring is in our near future—something that can handle the foot traffic from two entrances (interior and exterior) and tolerate some moisture.
I’ve handled many of our projects, but there’s a trade-off with all DIY. Balancing the work with a full-time job means most planning, decision-making, and manual labor waits until the weekends. A year in, I’m ready to consult professionals to take this kitchen across the finish line. My first call would be to Empire Today, particularly after it made BobVila.com’s Home Improvement Heroes list. The company’s end-to-end flooring solutions are particularly attractive.
Visualizing My Dream Kitchen
I’m only in the beginning stages of my journey, and Empire makes it easier to see the potential with the company’s virtual floor designer tool. With just a couple of angles of the in-progress kitchen, I can see nearly 100 new options. In minutes, I uploaded photos from my phone to the website where I filtered by color, shade, product type (specific flooring types, like “porcelain and ceramic tile”), or product line (the broader flooring category, like “tile flooring”) to preview Empire Today’s selections. Truthfully, the digital tool encouraged me to think more broadly about my floor options.
My first thought was to find a porcelain or ceramic tile rather than try to match the original flooring throughout the rest of the house. Not only would I escape clashing wood tones, but I’d gain durability and water resistance by design. The Tundra Stone in Meadow came close. Its soft movement of marble-like veining is a nod to a trendy marble. Meanwhile, the creamy ivory could be a complementary color for future kitchen designs, should I decide to repaint my cabinets or walls (or both).
The Surprising Options That Caught My Eye
To my surprise, I found myself liking a wood-look vinyl plank option: Astoria in Cafe. The Astoria planks outperform wood in a busy kitchen, thanks to 100 percent waterproofing and a thicker-than-average wear layer. That means no worrying about the extra foot traffic (or the mess that comes with it) near the exit out to the deck. Now, the 7.6-inch planks are 3 inches wider than the original wood flooring throughout the house. The tool enabled me to see planks running parallel to the existing wood planks as well as perpendicular, and rotating the planks in the kitchen makes the design difference feel more intentional.
I also mocked a version of my kitchen with LVP that comes close to the wood grain and stain. This style is manufactured with AquaDefense technology, which means 100 percent protection from spills and plumbing leaks and the ability to hold up to routine mopping. An aluminum oxide topcoat guards against scratches and fading caused by UV rays (not an afterthought with the big windows in my kitchen). Knoll Creek in Hilltop features a realistic wood grain that falls squarely between light and dark woods. This is a sample I’d love to see in person—and I can, when I take the next steps to set an appointment with my local Empire Today.
When choosing between light and dark, I relied heavily on the tool’s Compare function to view two favorites side by side on my screen. It’s not only helpful for me to imagine but also to communicate renovation ideas and reach design compromise with my husband. After a long design debate, we’re nearing a favorite: Knoll Creek in its Hilltop colorway. You can bet that I’ve already saved these kitchen photos and have added them to my mood boards.