Hi Oliger,

Neat project, I had a couple things to mention, no promises any of it will be helpful though..haha.

First, those vinyl tiles are what were in my parents kitchen for years. They installed them in mid to late 1999, and I believe they were from Armstrong. Bought them at Lowe's or Menard's at that time which is when they built the house they currently live in. I always liked those tiles, the pattern always seemed old fashioned/vintage looking to me even in 99' when we layed them, It's kind of neat to know now, from your history, that the pattern goes at least back to the 1980's if not farther.

They replaced the kitchen floor about 3 years ago due broken tiles from chair scrapes and a couple of 'floaters' that lost their sticky from a water leak near the sink, but the same yellowing happened to their floor as well.  It was mostly concentrated near their double patio door, where the sun hit it. They still have this floor in their laundry room, where they decided to leave it as is since it didn't have as much wear and tear there. Funny to see it in a picture online like this, but then we're both Hoosiers, it's a popular pattern out our way I guess, haha.

The second thing I want to mention is Sarah's suggestion. What she's referring to is called Retrobrite. It's not an exact product but rather a "recipe" someone concocted to reverse the yellowing/browning effect that occurs in different types of plastic as it ages. It was first used in restoring old Computer Hardware.. Monitor and PC cases, Keyboards, etc. that once were white but had developed a patina over the decades.The Retrobrite recipe uses high concentrates of peroxide and some other things to chemically reverse the yellowing process in some types of plastic. you can read about it here 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0brigh...

There are some  drawbacks in your situation for it not being a possible solution. The first would be that it is supposed to only work on ABS type plastics and Vinyl flooring may or may not be effected in the same way.

And the second issue is that the Retrobrite process requires direct sunlight to do it's thing. Parts that are meant to be de-yellowed are covered in the mixture then placed in a plastic bag,  the bag is then left to sit outside on a warm day in full sunshine for several hours, rotated occasionally to get exposure to all sides. It's a combination of the UV light and the heat that reacts with the chemicals that causes the whitening reaction.

It's a good idea definitely, but might not work for this application. I used it once to de-yellow a vintage cap to an old Downy bottle from the 70's and it worked a treat.

Try aiming better ...

Oliger,

   That's a fun room! Love it, it's even easier to appreciate it now, seeing more angles. I'm taking on some renovation projects in next couple months, hard work but worth it.. good luck with the shower.

So.... where exactly does one find colored toilet paper? I thought it was discontinued in the 80's.

Your original post made me go visit my parents today, I snapped a pic where their old tile (like yours) in laundry room, meets up with the newer stuff in the kitchen... needless to say I prefer the laundry room.

The Armstrong tile in my bathroom has yellowed too...and I can promise no wax has ever been applied to it because I installed the floor in 1999.  Wherever UV rays have been allowed to hit it, it has yellowed. 

I helped to rip out dozens of square feet of it about that long ago, none of it was worth much though, just from close to 20 years worth of being worn out/high traffic area use and the fact that tiles never come up 'whole', just torn chunks mostly. Now.... they do have several square feet of nearly pristine tiles under their floor cabinets. They were installed a month or two after the floor was put in and have sat covered and untouched ever since, I kinda doubt they'd ever take those up however. lol

This might help though

thefloorpro.com/community/topics...

It's a message board where someone (in 2014) was trying to find this same pattern in flooring to replace sections themselves. It gives alot of decent info on the flooring series name and at least one version of the item number it was sold under.

Bear in mind that "Vernay" is just the flooring series name, it's not the name of the specific pattern, they have multiple designs within the series, from what pops up in Google. Montelena seems to be the patterns name.. but again it could just be this one site

www.discountflooring.com/armstron...

And there's also this..... Nothing to excited about though as it's the wrong color, but, it shows this stuff still shows up now and then.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Armstrong-Verna...

Also, thanks for pointing out where to get the colored TP! I am right there with you on it, if I had a time capsule bathroom I'd buy it too. Heck, I'm considering on buying some anyway.

I've read elsewhere on AW that one of the home improvement stores (Lowes', Home Depot) will custom glaze their stock toilet's in different colors, if it didn't cost a small fortune (as I'm sure it must) it would be neat to color match the John to your new shower tiles.

**ETA: I'm colorblind so maybe it's already blue.. hah, I just realized

About 15 years ago I did the same search for my parents when they were trying to patch a few areas here and there. I spent hours trying to find it at the time. Somehow my memory retained the right name. When I did a test Google search earlier turns out I remembered it correctly. Funny how that works.

I would have mentioned it sooner but didn't know if you were looking to possibly patch in with new old stock or preferring to restore the original.

You know... I learned by accident when I was like 12 or 13 that Rit dye can permanently stain light colored vinyl flooring, if you decide to try and make the two halves match the opposite way.  haha.

Yes, I realized later the toilet was most likely very very light blue, I see it as a dimmed white, the way white has a blue or purple tint in shadows sometimes. Blues and purples are hard to decipher from each other, other than I know they are in that 'family' or whatever you might want to call it. So if I had seen the bath room without context that it was specifically blue, I probably would have guessed the paper and trim were purple.. it's kind of crazy.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I recall about 30 years or more ago, reading that environmentalists pushed for the phasing out of colored TP. Because the dyes do not biodegrade and apparently can be toxic to aquatic/marine life. This ma be the reason why the stuff is scarce and expensive today.

Moi, I'm just happy that there is TP in the holder. A heated bidet seat completes the process.