Pine, that’s a shame, they really went cheap on the maid’s rooms. Wooden flooring is very expensive to put in, yes! Good wood floors should be done in a hardwood (expensive), then for new ones, the sealers and finish take a long time and require a lot of caution (most are toxic… they can give off toxic gasses for a while, too). If the pine floors are level and smooth, they could indeed be a good base for something else.

While looking for something about off-gassing I found this neat guide to green flooring (from the US): http://www.greenhousing.umn.edu/comp_flooring.html
Here’s a much longer one: http://greenhomeguide.com/know-how/article/navigating-the-flooring-thicket-find-the-greenest-way-to-meet-your-needs
(I had no idea cork was so durable!)

There are gorgeous terracotta tiles here: http://www.salernes.com/
no idea what the prices are like, though…!

It’s made me rethink what to do in Paris. We’ve got wooden floors but, given these are old maids’ rooms, they’re made from simple planks of pine and are in an awful state, so we’ve been thinking of replacing them. But the quotes for wooden flooring were a little breathtaking…

So you have adhesive to remove too! It’s such a pain. (What kind of floors do you have in Paris?)

Soluble adhesive, I’m so glad to hear that exists!! Nothing has been worse than this tile adhesive on the linoleum; it stuck *very* well to both the ceramic tile and the lino, urgh. (With the tomettes, they’d been taken care of and so had enough wax protection to let very little adhesive soak in. Compared to the entry situation, taking tile off the tomettes is downright simple.)

It should be okay for the wall, though I’ll find out whether or not that’s actually true this weekend when I attempt it :)