Floor Show

There used to be little choice when it came to flooring for kitchens or baths. Hardwood, the undisputed king of flooring for the rest of the house, can work in a kitchen or bath, but maintenance issues associated with wood usually point folks in a more durable direction - namely, linoleum, vinyl and ceramic tile.

Recently, though, a whole new genre of flooring has surfaced, something that's loosely called "alternative" flooring. It includes such materials as cork, recycled rubber, bamboo, recycled vinyl and concrete.

"Everybody has their own definition for whatever they're calling 'alternative,'" says Kathleen Keller, director of marketing for Dodge-Regupol, a company known for its recycled rubber and cork flooring. "Cork," says Keller, "has been around long enough to be considered almost mainstream. But recycled rubber - that's another story."

Tires No More
What was once relegated to weight rooms and factories is now being used in high-style kitchens and baths. And it's addressing an environmental problem that has plagued landfills for years. Namely, what to do with all those old tires.

Dodge-Regupol, the largest user of old tires in the country, offers various lines of rubber flooring made from discarded tires (as opposed to virgin rubber) with EPDM (Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer) added to give it color. "Both [virgin] and recycled rubber are great, durable, colorful products," says Keller, "but recycled rubber is typically less expensive." As a bonus, using recycled rubber can earn builders credits with some "green" building programs.

Another green alternative is recycled vinyl flooring, a material that Minnesota architect Jeff Lindgren, of Streeter & Associates in Wayzata, finds especially useful in kitchens. "It doesn't look like vinyl, it doesn't feel like vinyl and it's a green product," says Lindgren, who has used recycled vinyl tiles from Luxica. "For the homeowner it's a win-win proposition."

Not Just for Pandas Anymore
Another eco-friendly floor material that's garnering attention is bamboo. Unlike traditional hardwoods, bamboo - a grass that matures in four years and grows to a height of 40 feet - doesn't require replanting. (Anyone who has tried to get rid of bamboo will tell you it's nearly impossible to kill.)

"We've seen a surge in interest in bamboo," says Danny Boyle, vice president of sales and marketing at Design DC, a flooring distributor in Alexandria, Va. "It's a good-looking product with a unique aesthetic. From a hardness and performance standpoint it's a very dense hardwood floor." A leader in the world of bamboo flooring is San Francisco-based Smith & Fong, manufacturers of Plyboo, the company's laminated bamboo products. Plyboo is fashioned from bamboo strips that are laminated edge-to-edge to create a single-ply panel.

Drive-Thru Kitchens
Light years away from the natural world of bamboo is another humble product - concrete - that's beginning to be used in residential spaces, especially edgy contemporary homes. Ali Honarkar, a principal of DivisionOne Architects in Silver Spring, Md., is partial to pre-cast concrete, which he used in his own Washington, D.C., row house. "I love it," says Honarkar. "We use it for almost all our countertops, but it has uses far beyond that."

Honarkar originally installed 1-by-1-inch white floor tiles in his master bathroom, but woke up one day and realized he was tired of looking at grout lines and wanted an even slicker look. Down went six 3-by-6-foot slabs of 1-½-inch pre-cast concrete from Concrete Jungle, a Baltimore, Md., company that's been fabricating concrete since 1996. (The joints get a grout that matches the concrete color.)

"I loved it so much," says Honarkar, "that I'm having Concrete Jungle put down slabs in my back yard instead of slate."

Product		Price per square foot
Cork		$11
Bamboo		$8
Recycled rubber		$11
Concrete: Simple stain		$2 to $4
Concrete: Sandblasted stencil work		$12 to $25