Saturday, March 7, 2015

What should the style of the house be?

Downton Abbey season finale and all I can think about is an English kitchen.  I fell in love with this style.... except less basement dungeon like.


More like these....


Dark and light


and not teal cabinets, but I liked the glass front doors on top.


These are all shaker style which are nice and simple.

So what happened?
I tried to buy a floor, I can't tell you how many obstacles there have been.  Mostly my taste, the location of the delivery, the limited stock of inventory and the high prices available locally.

I started out wanting hardwood, a no no over concrete unless there's a lot of prep involved $$

So I considered hardwood porcelain tiles.
I came up with several lovely combinations.


Really pretty and soft, no contrast here, Lovely right?
The nice man at the store gave me an estimate of $7K and complimented me on my selection saying it was the most inspired combination he'd seen that week.  I thanked him and ran.

Lowes had this combination.

$1.6 K

They didn't have enough in stock, then they told me it was critically important that all of my shades / lots be the same because there was wild variation in the tile.

Back to the drawing board.

How about these?

Within my budget, but I had been warned by my contractor to stay away from large tiles.


I loved these, just a touch more expensive but too modern for the space, maybe for the next house.
Looks like I'm getting away from the wood, so I might as well explore all of the other tiles.
Maybe slate or stone.


These had so much variation between the tiles that it was going to look busy.
Then I saw this.


These have a little less contrast, they are light and the space is small, not quite rustic, this will be a very feminine palette. 

On the company's website, they had this photo showing them installed with the different sizes that are available.  I like it, and we'll just have to make it work.  We'll have to be creative to get to a modern Downton look.





2 comments:

celkalee said...

Floors, floors, floors. I have spent more time fussing over floors in my decorating life than any other item. Do not envy you this task. Will bamboo work? What about cork? I saw a cork floor recently and it had been finished with some kind epoxy or something. Made them water proof and shiny. Rather nice. Good luck!

ELMO said...

My contractor nixed the cork idea, we both thought it might get nicked too often, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to pick up pins from a cork floor. Bamboo was rejected because it can't be sanded, but I did find a lovely cork floor, distressed and the perfect color, not enough quantity.

It's not easy...