Don't you just love those cement tiles that have been everywhere these past couple of years? I do. I think I've always loved them. I remember seeing the Ilse Crawford installed tile floor at High Road House when it opened in 2006, and finding it utterly delightful.
2006! That's forever ago. So that makes them timeless, right?
Delightful though that High Road House floor was, those forest colours would feel a little murky for sunny Hermosa Beach. And we're not building a Spanish Revival house so we'll avoid anything too Spanifornia (though in a different house I would be 100% all in on that Malibu Potteries vibe). We have a lot of stuff so that funky patchwork effect might be more visual clutter than we can absorb. I love it, but it's not quite right for our house.
We're building a contemporary, black and white and grey house. So the way to instal the cement tile I truly have always loved would be a more contemporary, black/white/grey look. Something like this, from Cle.
Look familiar? It will if you've looked at any new house built in the South Bay in the past two years. They are everywhere.
Which made us pause for thought. Maybe we should avoid them, in order to, well, not look like all the other new houses. Who wants to have the 'now' flooring when they're building the forever (hopefully) house?
But I was really in love with the idea. I thought it would make our little courtyard prettier too. In order to have continuous flooring, and a nice flow, between the kitchen and the courtyard we could keep the same flooring in both spaces. The rest of the ground floor will be polished concrete. This is how that works, on the floor plan:
And from a rendering, showing the view from the dining room across the kitchen towards the entry / library.
Delightful, isn't it?
Or will be it a bit contrived and just too much stuff going on? Would running the concrete across the whole ground floor and courtyard be more sophisticated? But who wants to be sophisticated when they could have soul (aka tile)?!
So that's the dilemma. For what it's worth the maintenance and environmental impact are fairly comparable. The tile will cost a bit more but nothing significant. It really just comes down to what kind of vibe we want.
I asked a clever design-savvy friend, who said some clever design-savvy things about flow, and being subversive, and drawing the eye. Our conversation made me feel pretty good about the tile. That and the memory that I have truly always loved it. Honestly.
The other thing that I can't get away from is my deep rooted desire for a tiled courtyard. And also to the same flooring in the kitchen as the courtyard. Ergo, a tiled kitchen.
For now, then, we're committed to tile. We'll avoid anything too 2020s Napa Farmhouse-y, just to be on the safe side.
Having said all that I've flip-flopped on this more times than Biden has on fracking. So we're not placing any tile orders just yet. The flip-flopping is all part of the fun, really. It's a high class problem. To be finally actually building, and in a position to be making these design choices, is a very nice place to be.
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