Kitchen face-lift {part nine} - Tile

Picking out tile is hard.  Just hard.

We picked out a tile that I really liked when we thought we were just going to paint our existing cabinets and keep the existing countertops.  But all that changed.  And we realized that our choice of tile needed to change as well.

And I was very set on having tile.  I’m one of those who just doesn’t really get with wood floors in the kitchen.

We looked at a lot of tile to find the one we would get.  That is some difficult decision making right there.  We had to realize at one point that the floor was not going to be the showpiece of the room and that we needed something that would go with the rest of the room, but not draw a lot of attention to itself.

We finally settled on a brushed marble we both loved and it was installed actually a couple of weeks ago (before the ice and snow). 

Before they actually started laying the tile, he came in with a big grinder to even out and level the floor even more.  Then they painted on a moisture barrier that will help protect the tile.  To my surprise, this moisture barrier was RED.

 

And it made all the walls and ceiling look pink.

After two days to lay the tile and one day to grout, they were done.  It makes me want to sigh with contentment.

It is a natural stone so every single tile is different.  And while there is a little bit of uniformity to the color across the entire floor, there is a lot of variation from tile to tile which makes it very interesting to look at.  And since it is a brushed marble instead of a highly polished one, it has this wonderful texture that makes my feet so happy.

We understand it to be a soft stone and we will have to seal it every year.  But I really loved it too much to care about any extra maintenance. 

An ice storm and unusually cold weather here in North Texas caused us to delay having the tile sealed by a week or so.  We didn’t want them to have to drive with the icy streets and we didn’t want to have to walk outside in 18 degree weather just to get from one side of the house to the other so that we didn’t walk on the freshly sealed tile. 

But now it is all sealed and we look at it every day and love it more and more.  We believe it accomplishes perfectly our goal of having a beautiful floor that will also not greatly compete with other decorative elements in the room.