Jack has 2, Maria has 9, Paul has 5.
The solution depends on the value of

. To make things simple, assume

. The homogeneous part of the equation is

and has characteristic equation

which admits the characteristic solution

.
For the solution to the nonhomogeneous equation, a reasonable guess for the particular solution might be

. Then

So you have


This means


and so the general solution would be
We have to find the area of the floor in order to know how many square meters of flooring they need.
The area of the floor is:
42 m* (39 m)= 1,638 m^(2)
They need 1,638 m^(2) of flooring.
Hope this helps~