So I have a question to toss out there. I need the voices of experience.
When I was growing up, there was a rock quarry a half mile down the road that had been in operation since colonial days; we had a flagstone entryway, a great place for scraping the mud off your shoes–oh oops, sorry, Mom. I love love love floors like that. Solid and of the earth.
We have 20 year old vinyl flooring in the kitchen and halls and bathrooms, and it has definitely seen better days. So we’ve been looking. The house is a California ranch built on a slab.
One salesman told me his Linkwerks stuff was far better than plain vinyl; wears longer, is thicker, is in essence padded compared to, say, a stone floor. He says.
Given that I’m someone damaged in both bones and balance and I fall.
But the materials cost is almost as much as some stone ones, so why bother? And I don’t want to repeat the disappointments of what I had: the vinyl had a lot go wrong quickly, and the tile entryway cracked in a small earthquake.
I liked some of the slate floors I saw online–some have smooth surfaces, some, irregular, but Saturday’s salesman told me that regardless, slate absolutely wouldn’t do around a grandson who will be crawling in a few months, that it chips and flakes and the little one could skin his knee.
Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted to crawl on my folks’ old entryway for the hardness, but then at my age I wouldn’t really want to crawl on much of anything; I don’t know if he was just trying to upsell me?
One reviewer on Yelp said to beware of cheap granites vs good ones, without answering the question that immediately raises: how can you tell?
So my question is, what do you have that you’ve been happy with?
(Edited to add: our water table is too high to make wood work.)