What’s the Best Kitchen Floor to Install When You Plan to Sell the House Soon?
Your kitchen flooring is ugly and you know it needs to look better so that you can sell the house. You don’t want to rip out the current flooring. What should you install over the top to make it sell-ready but not spend too much money?
Best Answer
Install laminate flooring.
Because:
Laminate can go directly over those tiles, with the addition of foam underlayment. I do believe that laminate is a good choice, and its looks have been getting better every year. Laminate is not waterproof, but if it is tightly installed, seams will not allow water to infiltrate.
The only thing I might object to with the real estate agent’s advice is to look for something better than the absolute cheapest laminate, as some of those look hideous and do not join well–namely the $0.49/sq. ft. stuff from Lumber Liquidators or BuildDirect.
Qualifiers
Laminate runs neck-to-neck with luxury vinyl flooring as the cheap cover-up flooring choice for inpending house sales. Don’t let the terminology fool you: luxury vinyl flooring is still vinyl flooring. It just looks better and is often more deeply embossed than the horrible vinyl flooring of years past. It’s also thick enough that planks can be joined with a tongue-and-groove type of method. But not always. Some luxury vinyl flooring joins with self-adhesive.
Best Sources
My own opinion.
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Reader’s Original Question
I have ugly 1983 commercial small square tiles the builder put in my kitchen when my 1350 sq. ft. home was built in 1983. I was told to either put laminate or luxury vinyl plank or luxury vinyl flooring or engineered vinyl flooring over it. I do not wish to rip out the existing ugly color tile.
What is the correct flooring I can put over the ugly current kitchen tile? and does it need to be waterproof? I am considering selling my home and most California RE agents told me to put the cheapest laminate over the tile. They did not care if it is waterproof or not. They told me since I am in a starter neighborhood here, anything would look better the the current tile that was put in my home. Whatever I need to have, I would want to match the color up with the carpet I am putting in the house.