Mudroom Saga: Flooring

The other morning, my husband and I got our weekly mochas and lattes to go and strode over to the large home improvement store across the street.  I was brimming with enthusiasm and ideas. 

I like color.  Perhaps something with slight color variations . . . something subtle.  Earth tones.  Or not.  Checkerboard?  Oh, I've always wanted a checkerboard floor . . . not black and white; no, something perkier . . . red and white?  Red and gray?  Pink and yellow?  Okay, no . . . that won't be marketable, and we plan to probably sell this house someday.  Okay, back to something mainstream.  But with some color.  Something with a little personality.  Not the plain beige stuff easily found in all fast food joints and grocery store dairy sections.   

We arrived in the flooring department to find that all the ceramic tile looked almost exactly the same and, yep, much like the stuff I step on when selecting a jug of milk.  Well, okay, I'm not being fair.  You can choose lightish or darkish.  But otherwise, it's all pretty much the same. 

I made this observation as an indictment of the entire selection and was moving the argument in the direction of going to a dedicated flooring store.  Before I could make my considered conclusion known to my husband, he seized upon my proclamation that all the tiles look the same and cut in front of me with his conclusion instead:  If they all look the same, clearly we should buy this close-out stuff in the corner that is about a third of the price of any other tile offered.  Hmmm.  Not the direction I was heading.  Hard to really refute, based upon the premise I had set down.

It does all look the same, as I had just carelessly announced.

It is neutral, which is what we really should put in.

It is alarmingly affordable, another handy fact since we plan to spend most of the budget on the storage system.

And it is only the mudroom.  No one goes in there but the regular inhabitants of this house.  It need not "say" anything about us or our tastes or preferences.  It need only stay put, look clean, and not detract market value from our house.  Even this dairy-section selection would be a vast improvement over the stained, peeling, dingy 30 year old linoleum in there now.

Backed into a logical corner, I had to counter . . . "But still."

In an effort to diffuse the situation,stall for time, and avoid getting dairy tile, I sent my husband on to work while I rocketed around town looking at storage systems.  Surely, one would select the storage system first, so many options in lovely faux-but-still-expensive veneer . . . cherry?  maple?  pine?  white?  silverrrrrr?  Then we'll select the flooring to coordinate.


Yeah, that sounds like a plan. . .