Bushwick Urban Archaeology: Nasty Lineoleum
Technically this is vinyl tile, but I call all such coverings “linoleum.” There are so many sizes and patterns of this stuff in the yard, I could probably cover a whole apartment floor with them in a full rainbow. This particular pattern is not the most offensive of the stuff I have pulled up, but it’s still pretty nasty.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:53 am
yesterday i tried to get to the wood floors that I know are under the carpeting in our apt. I dug up FOUR layers of linoleum and vinyl tile in some spots! Then when i finally hit the hardwood, they were covered in thick hardened glue. its a lost cause and I have officially given up.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:00 am
That sucks — you could have them refinished…or at least stick some cuter vinyl on top.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Wow, think of all The Brady Bunch episodes that were broadcast above that tile…. Groovy!
July 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
By the way, is that burnt charred wood underneath there?
July 1st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Nah, rotten old log. But we do have plenty of burnt wood.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
What is up with the wall to wall linoleum in the apts around here? I never saw such a thing until I moved here. When I first looked at my old place I it had crappy old torn linoleum in every room, each with a different pattern. I told my landlord I would only take the apt if the floors were refinished, thinking they would rip it all up and refinish the wood floors underneath. Instead they covered the entire place with laminate floor, which was 100 times better than what was there but I was still disappointed.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Having recently dealt with a bed bug problem, I can tell you that old wood floors with gaps between the boards would provide many more hiding places than sheet vinyl.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:51 am
Jeremmy, I think my mom had that linoleum on our kitchen floor back in the 70’s. The reason you see so much of this crap in Buswick is that Linoleum was the cheapest way to cover up the poorly kept wooden floors found in most Bushwick railroad flats. Hardware stores on Kncikerboocker avenue, Graham avenue and Rite-Aid on Broadway sold linoleum to the Italian and Puerto Rican migrants that filled the neighborhood at one time. Cheap and easy to install. We considered anyone with real carpeting (rugs) to be rich.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Tony, that is/was the same for ridgewood. Linoleum everywhere in most of the buildings. Ridgewood, like Bushwick has most floors with those older wide plank wood floors.
Most of the ones in my old building were all covered with linoleum, probably for decades. Usually, when you ripped up the linoleum, the wood floors were awful looking, many even painted! And then years of painting the walls without drop cloths on top of that even!
I don’t understand it either though, I have never seen linoleum all over the floors in other areas. Who the heck would put linoleum in any room other than the kitchen? Yuck.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
Ahhhh….Welcome to old-school,proletarian NYC–yes,it was the(almost)universal problem-solver for the cheap pine-floor blues,starting sometime in the late’30s-my grandparents up in Washington Heights had this in the kitchen.Im sure you newcomers’folks had some of this in their past,especially if they grew up in the Northeast…Middle America…hmmm…not so sure
July 4th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I don’t know anyone who didn’t have linoleum floors in their kitchens. And I never knew of anyone who had it anywhere else BUT the kitchen! It’s actually expensive to have linoleum correctly installed. We had my grandmother’s done and they put down a subfloor first to even out the surface. If you just slap it down on an uneven floor it will crack in spots, which is just what happens with all these floors here. My landlord was the cheapest though. I had those square tiles with the adhesive back. Whenever one started to chip away and peel I would pull it off and slap down another one.