Leaving pine wood floors in a kitchen for a rental?

Cate – Glad you are liking the Marmoleum choice.

But I really have to disagree that vinyl floors are OK – I never liked them, even before we thought about the environmental concerns with vinyl. I’d not rent a place with them (and haven’t since the ’80s), as I don’t like the way they feel underfoot.

I’ve liked my wood kitchen floors best (all were original, old wood); secondly, the tiled ones – though I found tile hard to stand on without padding, and cold under bare feet in the winter (which I remedied with cotton rag rugs – a friend told me that was tacky, but I preferred the warmth and comfort); and I also like real linoleum just fine, and would certainly install it in a kitchen renovation that didn’t have nice, original wood floors in it already, though I haven’t lived with it since I was a child.

Come to think of it, only in the chronically under-heated brownstones were the tiles too cold – in an overheated, larger building, they were warm enough, though I still had to place a rubber mat in front of the sink for comfort while standing there.

Any of those – wood, tile or linoleum – will also last many times longer than vinyl, which I find wears poorly on the surface, even when installed properly in sheet vinyl form.