Cheapest possible floor covering

Hi all :)

We are in the middle of some "interim" renos at the moment. I simply can't live with my kitchen/bathroom the way they are any longer, but our big renos aren't planned for at least another 5 years. I can't see myself putting up with a half sized bath and 60 year old (no exaggeration...) oven for that much longer. So. Interim renos.

So I'm looking for recommendations for the cheapest possible floor coverings (and not too hard to tear up in 5 years time) for kitchen and bathroom. I thought this would be lino, but apparently this is more $$ than carpet?! Which surprised me.

Anyone have any sneaky suggestions?

TIA :)

Tish

What is your current flooring? What is underneath? If you have good floor boards under there, then I suggest just doing a quick sand to smooth and a good varnish or oiling. No need to sand till perfect, just to get them nice under foot. That is what we did in our lounge as I was so fed up with the carpet.

Have you checked out Bunnings for some of their cheaper flooring?

i'm with astrid. If you are in a 60+ year old home in melbourne, you are likely to have floor boards and they can be "fixed" fairly cheaply.

I put lino down in our garage when I converted it to a playroom and I found that some places were waaay more expensive than others for the same stuff. I also found that if you are not overly fussy about the lino you put down, then they can sometimes have a range they are trying to get rid of and it is way cheaper than going for current lines. We got 36 square metres of lino for about $400 and it is a cushiony lino with a nice wood finish. It was a line they didn't want to run anymore so it was quite cheap comparatively. Shop around, you might be surprised what you can find ... that's if you don't have wood floor like what the others have suggested because I reckon that would definitely be the way to go if you can do that :)

We are also doing some cheap reno's as we don't will be leaving here in a few years. So we are doing things up easiest way we can to make a difference etc. Can't help with the bathroom, but in our hallway, nursery & soon in our kitchen we used cheap version of floating floorboards that "click together". We got them on sale for less than $25per square metre. Our floorboards under the lino were too ruined. The best thing about it is it's cheaper, & the "click together" style of them means you put the floor in yourself, saving you the $$$ of paying someone to do it for you. We did a large hallway & a nursery for less around $800. I think that's pretty good for 2 rooms considering it was about $650 just for the carpet in DS room. I would think you would be able to get it from bunnings cheap also, we got ours at a flooring shop.

Erin - does that click together flooring come up and go back down easily because that might be another solution for saving - depending on what flooring you want, Tish, you could do the click together flooring, pull it up when you need to renovate and relay it.

The click flooring isn't recommended for wet areas is it?

good luck with your renovations,can be frustrating at times.I re-did my kitchen floor about 6 months ago using self adhesive vinyl floor tiles,they sound a bit tacky but actually look quite good,only cost $120 to do,my 4 year old did some of them so easy to put down,bought them from bunnings warehouse,each tile is 30 cm squared,come in a box of about 45 tiles for around $60,can buy them separately as well for about $1.30,come in about 8 different colours/designs.

We did our kitchen with the Ikea click-lok flooring, it was about $18/sqm. They had cheaper but the more expensive (if you can call it that) was what was recommended for kitchens. It looks really good. You have to be careful you don't chip the edges while you're laying it though.

Tish ditto what others said if you have timber floors. You can sand using a hand-held orbital sander (it sucks and is slow but it works well enough). I did 3 large sized bedrooms this way once, mum hand brushed 2 of the rooms with varnish (doubt it was "floor qaulity" and "whitewashed" the other with a light blue paint and then sealed it with varnish. The paint worked the best :)