Welcome to our kitchen with a new white tile floor. New flooring and new paint are the two things that make the greatest impact in a house design. Either of these change the look of rooms dramatically, and I love the way the new tile transformed our house.
Previously, the floor was vinyl planks designed to look like wood planks. After several years the vinyl was cracked in a few places and chipped in many places which meant the floor needed to be replaced.
Although I liked the old vinyl planks because they were bright and super easy to keep clean, I chose to go with porcelain tile as a replacement. The kitchen floor adjoins real oak floor in the living room and dining room, and the vinyl planks did not match the oak.
The two floors did not look bad. They just looked O F F.
The new Rialto White porcelain tile covers the floors in the breakfast sunspace, kitchen, stairwell, entry, half bath, mud room, and utility room. In other words, many areas known as wet areas.
Therefore, the floors need to be as waterproof as possible and easy to clean.
The new tile floor fills both of those needs and a third one...
waterproof, easy to clean, and
a continuous harmonious pattern
A fourth reason for choosing the Rialto White porcelain tile is the tile mimics stone flooring which looks similar to authentic flooring in vintage French Country houses.
Of course, the tile does not look exactly like stones, but looks very good for a fraction of the cost of real stones. The tile is one of the patterns in stock at Lowes. Since the tile is not a custom order, that also keeps the price low.
The tile looks good with the adjoining oak floor and the stone wall in the kitchen. The offset pattern of the tiles and the very thin 1/16" grout line also help replicate the look of a stone floor.
Most of the time I have live plants in the breakfast sunspace area. We are still cleaning and moving the furniture back into place so there is only the one live topiary on the table in this photo. The cone topiary in the blue high chair is a preserved boxwood.
With the tile floor I will not worry about damaging the floor from occasional spills while watering plants or from setting potted plants on the floor.
A good side effect of having to take all the furniture out for the floor to be replaced is rearranging the spaces. There is nothing new on the white shelves in the sunspace, but most of these items were someplace else previously.
The plant-stand-turned-plate-stand earlier this Spring is now on the opposite side of the sunspace.
Each day we make more progress in rearranging and restoring the rooms. Half of the windows in this photo have their freshly laundered, starched, and ironed valances rehung.
Any questions? I would love to share what I have learned to help you with your latest or upcoming projects. Just leave a comment or send an email using the CONTACT form under my header photo.
Thank you for reading about how I am creating
a French-inspired garden and home
with new tile floors in the kitchen that mimic stone.
