Tuesday 30 October 2012

a heated debate

Here's a pic of our gorgeous new multi fuel range cooker that is still sitting in our garage eagerly waiting to be installed and start making us beautifully risen cakes, succulent roasts and generally just keeping us nice and toasty. Unfortunately there's been more dilemmas with installing this than we first entertained. There''s all sorts of regulations about how close it can be to this, that and the other. Most significantly, we can't have it sit on a wooden floor and a further 1/2 metre around it can't be wood or other such flammable material either. So we had to re think our whole plans.  I was just about to order some nice large porcelain slabs in a light beige colour to do the whole kitchen and dining area when I thought more about the floor and the implications of laying these tiles. It's so bumpy and uneven it would cost as a fortune to create the necessary smooth surface. And with such posh tiles, we wouldn't want to lay them ourselves as they would have to be absolutely perfect or it would show up like the proverbial wart on the end of your nose. Tilers as uber pricey people (should've been a tiler..or a plumber...or a roofer) and we couldn't really afford it without cutting back elsewhere.  Although I was secretly happy (sshh) about not having to clean anymore of that white laminate flooring, we've in the end decided to stick with the wooden floor plan and making a feature around the cooker with tiles. I then took to scouring the internet looking for retro floor tiles. I found amazing tiles, reclaimed Minton on ebay but it seemed like sacrilege to put them under a cooker in a 70's bungalow when the should be proudly reinstated in a grand entranceway of a Victorian period house. Keeping with that theme however, I've just ordered these tiles from Fired Earth, which I think have a bit of a retro vibe to them. Are you digging it?

Now the fun begins in actually laying them and creating the smooth look that's in my head where the two different times of flooring come together effortlessly with a perfect neat, smooth join. Help!