Getting ready to tile the future mudroom has us thinking about the tile-future of the rest of our first floor. Our floors are in sorry shape due to poor workmanship and our senior bulldog. So we have plans to replace most of the first floor with wood or tile in the next few years. There are so many great tile options out there right now! I think we are going to stick with slate in the mudroom because we loved it so much in our old kitchen. However, there are a few variations we are considering:
In addition to tiling the mudroom, we may tile our first floor bathroom at the same time. I talked about our bathroom needing some attention in my Target post. It turns out Parker doesn’t think we should paint the bathroom unless we just go for the gusto and redo the whole thing. He says that if we paint and then tile down the road, we will end up messing up the paint. It’s only like 20 square feet, so we could do an entire revamp pretty inexpensively. Again, we planned to replace the bathroom tile at some point anyway because its connected to the foyer, which has lots of cracked tile and missing grout. Encaustic cement tile seems to be a thing right now. I’m not big on using trends in permanent ways, but these tiles feel like they are fresh and modern, yet could have been in your great grandma’s bathroom. So I think I’d be happy with any of these options for a very long time. Here are a few encaustic cement tiles we are considering:
We have no experience with the encaustic cement tiles. I looked up encaustic, by the way, and it is a wax based paint that is applied to a porous surface and then reheated to make the paint absorb into the material. I also briefly started to look into their durability because that is important to us, especially because we tend to be hard on things (and by we I’m being nice because I really mean Parker 🙂 ). I know cement is absorbent (thus its ability to take the paint), so I want to make sure it won’t stain. It sounds like as long as you follow a strict sealing procedure during and right after install, it should be fine. Also, since the paint is absorbed into the material, chipping is less noticeable than on porcelain.
What are your favorites? Do you think different tiles in different rooms of the house should “go together”? Which layout do you like the best if we used the last tile option? Check out the two websites I linked to on the pictures. There are SO MANY cool tiles!! I think they would look great on the floor or a wall. I’ve seen them used as back splashes on a few blogs and also on a few homes on Fixer Upper. Let me know if you find any you would love to use in your own house!