For heaven’s sake, no hardwood on your kitchen floor !

Hardwood on the floor of your kitchen is not a good idea. I know what you are thinking – magazines everywhere are showing beautiful gleaming hardwood flooring in the kitchen!!

Yes, I agree. But what you see in magazines is not necessarily a practical choice for you. I have to admit that many of my clients are using hardwood in their kitchens but I don’t recommend it. And let me tell you a story…

One fine Saturday morning, you wake up feeling on top of the world. You climb out of bed and slowly reach your beautiful new kitchen with stunning new cabinets (hopefully from Tango!), granite countertop, luxurious sink and faucet, beautiful backsplash tile, brand new appliances and of course, hardwood flooring. The first cup of your favorite Brazilian coffee is brewing and you reach into the fridge to grab some milk. Just as you turn towards the island, the milk slips and lands on the floor. Yes, the bag was opened the night before and now the milk is all over your floors.

Suddenly, the weekend is starting to go downhill really fast… you curse, then reach for every piece of cleaning material you can find to soak up the milk. Frantically, you dab an entire roll of kitchen towels all over your floor in the hope that you soak it all up… and you do. There is no more milk to be seen on the surface. Sadly, its too late already. The milk has found its way into the cracks and crevices of the wood and is sitting beneath the wood and penetrating the wood from underneath. Soon, it will start smelling and could cause the wood to buck.

So you ask, can it not be fixed?  Yes, it can but I doubt if anyone would be willing to go through the proper way to fix the floor… which involves basically undoing all the work that went into the kitchen installation and redoing it from scratch.

Outside of the scenario above, the other reason for my “no hardwood” stand is that hardwood does not wear well. Save yourself the hassle and choose a hard surface and skip the hardwood entirely. Never mind what the magazines say.