Retro Renovation

As Ohio Catherine’s retro renovation continues, she has uncovered this gorgeous vintage linoleum in her ranch home - and wants to know how to clean and maintain it. To help, I turn to my trusted resource, Twentieth Century Building Materials.Catherine writes:

Hello Pam,

Hope all is well. i am in the midst of tearing out the vinyl sheet and plywood on top of my original linoleum sheet flooring and thought you could take a peek at it and tell me what you think?

I thought it was going to be all dark red from the doorway i tore up first, but it ended up just being the red around the outside. it is a creamy beige with seemingly no pattern of darker swirls on the rest of the floor. do you have a section on old linoleum cleaning suggestions? or if there is a finish you can do to liven it up? its going to take me the next two days to get all the subfloor nails out. but, im going to keep it for now, until i can decided (and afford!) to replace it. it definitely seems appropriate for the kitchen

Thanks so much,
catherine

Pages for conserving linoleum are attached but in a nutshell:

• Do not let water stand on lineoleum, it will separate the layers from the backing.
• If your linoleum is faded, apparently you can bring its color back with exposure to daylight or fluorescent light.
• Do not using cleaning materials with alkalis. No bleaches. No powdered cleansers. NOTHING ABRASIVE.
• If stripping wax is necessary, consider a newer aqueous based or limonen-based stripper. Test in a small patch. There could be other coatings on the floor that require a different approach - see the pages.
• Once a floor is cleaned, use a protective coating such as wax or aliphatic polyurethane. No aromatic urethane, though.
• To clean on a regular basis: sweep dry, then if necessary mop with a damp (not wet) mop and small amount of nonionic, pH neutral detergent and rinse the same way with clear water.

Heck if I know which cleaners are ionic, alkaline, etc…. More research required. But meanwhile, know to: Tread lightly.

Tags: cleaning, ohio catherine, vintage linoleum

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