Vintage laminate and lino alternatives

[tcowdroy]

Hi all,
I'm a new member, without a caravan as yet, though I'm working on it.
Just thought I'd give a heads up on a couple of products I've recently used in a 50's kitchen reno, and may be useful to people searching for vintage caravan interior stuff. As anyone who has searched for retro bench top laminate will know, there ain't much out there. I did, however, discover some 70's modern patterns at Abet Laminati from their "Memphis Project" of few decades ago, that are at least sympathetic to older eras. They aren't cheap at around $100.00 a square metre, but the quality and designs are great. Check out the patterns here
www.abetlaminati.com/?s=memphis&searchsubmit=Search
They have offices in Australia and they are great to deal with.

The other product is vinyl floor tiles that are very reminiscent of old style lino. We used the black and white tiles in classic checkerboard style. Looks just like lino, with the black tiles having white streaks through it and visa versa for the white tiles. They have some great pastel colours as well. Much easier to look after than lino too. They are from Armstrong Flooring's Excelon Designer commercial range. We bought them through Carpet Court in Bega, NSW. You can check them out here:
www.armstrong-aust.com.au/commflrpac/en-au/flooring.asp/vinyl-composition-tile/_/N-1z141mp

All the best,
Tony

[Franklin1]

G'day Tony,

Thanks very much for that information and the links. If only they made the vinyl floor tiles in the smaller vintage caravan size, we'd all be laughing. Unfortunately for me, I baulk at the 300 x 300mm size in a small caravan, particularly when you want to mix a couple of colours or more.

I've often wondered whether you could get these tiles precision cut down to the smaller size. Yes you'd be wasting half of each tile, but when there's not many flooring products available that match the vintage era, it would at least provide me with an option.

cheers,
Al.

[tcowdroy]

Hi Al,
These vinyl composite tiles are very stiff - more like lino than typical vinyl - and cut very well on a table saw, with the fence set to the size you want. This method will ensure all the tiles are EXACTLY the same size. The 2mm thick version we used, were similar in stiffness to the same thickness MDF or plywood. They aren't cheap (around $80 SQM), so all those off cuts will hurt a bit, but your average caravan doesn't need that much.
We used my table saw, with an 80 tooth fine cut blade, to do this for the odd sized sections in our kitchen floor and it worked a treat.

Cheers,
Tony

[seeshell]

Hi Tony and Al

There's a place in Victoria called McMasters which has a lot of that 2 and 3mm lino squares in various vintage colours for about $15/sqm. Also, unless you go through a distributor, Anderson won't sell the tiles direct - you're right about them being like spun gold on cost.

I do have about 10sqm that I was going to use for the Olympic (in green), but of course now, I don't have the need for it.

If anyone needs some tiles I'm happy to help out by going over there some time.

Cheers
Seeshell