topic Re: ceramic tile flooring in Home

ceramic tile flooring

traveler — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 21:57:02 GMT

Okay, educate me. Currently our place has vinyl flooring in kitchen and foyer, lot's of wet tracked in. The rest of the condo is carpet except for bathrooms. Our attached neighbor (duplex condo) replaced all his carpeting with wood floors and is it noisy. We hear them running up and down stairs, moving stuff, whatever.

The other day DH was talking to someone else and said he'd like to replace carpeting with hardwood and the vinyl floors with ceramic tiles. I've thought they chipped and were hard to clean. Did I mention he doesn't clean? So how are ceramic tile flooring?

Re: ceramic tile flooring

lynnzzz — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 22:20:56 GMT

I have ceramic tile floors that we put in the bathrooms and bedroom! It is hard and if you drop anything on them, it will break. I would opt for a darker grout as it gets very dirty and is hard to keep clean! It's cold on the feet in the winter, I have several throw rugs down. It is very pretty though! HTH

Re: ceramic tile flooring

ANewHue — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 22:32:31 GMT

I have tile in my kitchen /bathroom. and although it's true most things you drop will break I still love them. Mine are a natural color with a terracotta grout, I clean the grout with a paste made from borax and water and they come clean. I do that several times a year. They would stay cleaner if it weren't for my DH coming in from the yard with dirty shoes/boots. I would love to redo mine to larger tiles. It is cold in winter but I always have something on my feet so it doesn't affect me.

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Kachina624 — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 23:54:52 GMT

Before you make a decision, look at the new vinyl that looks exactly like hardwood planks. I'd love to do my whole house in it. Vinyl is the most practical surface for kitchens.

Re: ceramic tile flooring

brii — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:08:50 GMT

The reason hardwood floors are loud is the proper under layment wasn't used. We have ceramic tile planks that look like hardwood. They used a thick mesh type layer before the tiles were put down.

We have vinyl plank in our basement. We put it right over the previous flooring.

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:18:21 GMT

We JUST put new 16" Armstrong vinyl resilient tiles in our kitchen last week...LOVE the new floor! I was thrilled to finally get rid of the old and yellowing formica floor. I was brought up with formica, had it in my apt before I met my DH, and both houses we lived in had formica...LOVE the change!

We wanted tiles, but not ceramic. Ceramic is cold to the feet (for those that love to walk barefoot like myself), easily chip, and we didn't want the added expense of adding a heat system under the floor.

We also grouted them too (the color of the grout is seashell)...liked the look better than if the squares were right next to each other.

I'll go get the pics off our camera and post them in a few minutes

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Nightowlz — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:31:17 GMT

We have ceramic tile floor & some engineered hardwoods. You cannot hear anything when we walk on the wood floor. The ceramic is easy to clean. I disagree with using a darker color grout. My girlfriend used a darker grout & now it really looks dirty. We used a color called Tumbleweed which is a lighter beige/tan color. Our grout is now gray. When I researched before we bought tile I read you might as well use gray color grout because that's what color it will turn. Guess it's true because that's what happened to ours. Of course it won't turn gray if you use a darker grout. I think it will just continue to get darker & look dirtier. Our grout does not look dirty it just looks gray now. We have had our tile for 10 yrs or a little longer. None of the tiles have ever chipped or cracked. If you live in an older house & your house has settled you probably won't have that problem unless the installer does not know what they are doing. We are on slab not sure what your foundation is. I use the Hoover FloorMate on out tile & sometimes use a floor steamer.

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:46:01 GMT

The 1st 3 pics are of our old formica floor...the same floor from when the house was built back in 1995. This 1st pic is by our front door. Why oh why there is barely a square yard of a different formica flooring by the entrance I always thought looked silly

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:46:43 GMT

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:47:17 GMT

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:48:52 GMT

These next 4 pics are of our new floor. The larger 16"" tiles actually make our small kitchen look bigger too...LOVE!

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:49:31 GMT

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:50:55 GMT

Oopsie! I forgot to put the stove drawer back in before I took this pic...LOL

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:51:48 GMT

Last pic...

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Luvtoshopathome — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:13:16 GMT

I just had my whole house done over. Originally I ordered beautiful thick vinyl wood planks for my kitchen which is very big. Unfortunately the company did not send me enough. When I called them they told me they didn't have the color I ordered any more. I didn't want to send them back since they were quite expensive to mail back. I decided to have them installed in my living room and they look beautiful. So, I opted for Italian ceramic tile in my kitchen and bathroom. BIGGEST MISTAKE IN MY LIFE! First, ceramic tile is very bad on your joints, especially if you have any back or joint issues. Second, if something falls and breaks there will be glass that shatters all over the floor. I recently dropped a jar of homemade tomato sauce and you wouldn't believe the mess, there was glass and sauce all over the floor. I actually stood there and cried, it took so long to get all the sauce and glass up making sure there were no slivers of glass especially since I have 2 very inquisitive Persian cats that wanted to walk on the floor while I was cleaning it up. Do yourself a favor and go with the vinyl floor planks, the ones that are floating and click in. I bought mine from IFloors online, you can google them. Good luck!

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Susan Louise — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:29:05 GMT

On 3/1/2015 luvtoshopathome said: I just had my whole house done over. Originally I ordered beautiful thick vinyl wood planks for my kitchen which is very big. Unfortunately the company did not send me enough. When I called them they told me they didn't have the color I ordered any more. I didn't want to send them back since they were quite expensive to mail back. I decided to have them installed in my living room and they look beautiful. So, I opted for Italian ceramic tile in my kitchen and bathroom. BIGGEST MISTAKE IN MY LIFE! First, ceramic tile is very bad on your joints, especially if you have any back or joint issues. Second, if something falls and breaks there will be glass that shatters all over the floor. I recently dropped a jar of homemade tomato sauce and you wouldn't believe the mess, there was glass and sauce all over the floor. I actually stood there and cried, it took so long to get all the sauce and glass up making sure there were no slivers of glass especially since I have 2 very inquisitive Persian cats that wanted to walk on the floor while I was cleaning it up. Do yourself a favor and go with the vinyl floor planks, the ones that are floating and click in. I bought mine from IFloors online, you can google them. Good luck!

How long was it from when you got your tiles to when you called back to get more?

Thankfully, since we loved our new tiles in the kitchen so much, we decided to order the same ones a week later so we had enough for our 2 bathrooms when we update them early next year...no cold ceramic tile floors for us and we didn't want to risk the tiles becoming obsolete if we waited til next year to get them. They match perfectly back to our taupe carpet in the rest of the house too.

We found out by reading many reviews online that floors get discontinued quite often. Some flooring will be around for years, others for very short periods of time. Sometimes it's due to low sales, other times it's because a vendor of a company decides to stop making a particular flooring due to lack of materials or they go out of business...could be anything. It was no problem for us to just store the 4 boxes of tiles for the bathrooms in the corner of our basement til next year

Re: ceramic tile flooring

winamac1 — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:29:18 GMT

On 3/1/2015 Susan Louise said:
These next 4 pics are of our new floor. The larger 16"" tiles actually make our small kitchen look bigger too...LOVE!

Love that!!

Mine is similar but a different color!

Re: ceramic tile flooring

winamac1 — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:29:46 GMT

On 3/1/2015 Susan Louise said:
Last pic...

Susan..I love your tile!!!

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Q4u — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:49:53 GMT

The house we just left had the whole downstairs with cream tiles with cream grout and were about 12 years when we moved in. We had the grout professionally cleaned but it still didn't get rid of all the stains. And there were chipped and cracked tiles. We eventually redid the entire downstairs in laminate flooring. But the new house we just moved into also has some tile and grout but the coloration of the tile does not show dirt and the color of the grout (and the type of grout) does not show/attract dirt and stains. They've made a lot of strides in the quality of tile and grout these days. Look into that because it's made a world of difference~! I used to sit on my b*tt with a bleach solution and brush and hand clean ALL the grout to keep it as clean as I could. I don't have to do that here....

Yay!

Re: ceramic tile flooring

Marp2 — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 02:03:29 GMT

I have ceramic tile in several locations and in the master bathroom. During colder months I could use the bathroom as a refrigerator. Not only is the floor very cold it makes the entire bathroom cold. I wish I could afford to take the ceramic tiles up and either replace them with something else or install a floor heating system.