my new kitchen tiles!!!! ~ Make Do and DIY

Yes, finally, the new kitchen tiles are in! They've been in for a few weeks actually but I've been too busy enjoying them to blog about it. That and the fact that it's never been clean enough to take photos #reallife

Anyway, here they are, in all their neutral, easy to clean glory...

Love them. Love, love, LOVE them! If you've been following me for a while you night remember the horror that was the original tile....

how to paint a tile floor, and what you should think about before you do!

And then I went ahead and painted them! Was it crazy? Probably. Was it better than living with tiles I hated while we saved up to get them re-done? Absolutely.

how to paint a tile floor, and what you should think about before you do! www.makedoanddiy.com

Eventually though, we had the money put aside to get the whole kitchen and utility room floor re-tiled, and it wasn't a minute too soon as eighteen months after I first did it my paint job had come to the end of it's natural life. So we found our tile, got some quotes for the work, and then went for it.

It took longer than I expected to get the job done, and it was seriously messy (the dust!!!!) but it was totally worth it.

You can just tile over tiles, but we wanted to do a proper job, and also we wanted the floor levels between the rooms to be as flush as possible, which of course couldn't be achieved by going over the old tiles so the terracotta monsters had to come out! I'd like to say we considered doing this part ourselves but the truth is we knew it would be an awful job, and when we were quoted just €250 for this part of the work our minds were made up. If you did want to remove tile yourself though (and I totally would in a smaller area, on a backsplash or something) it's basically a matter of a lot of elbow grease, just make sure you get yourself some proper safety equipment, flying chips of tile are no joke! Engelbert Strauss does some great stuff in this line. Also, you'll probably need to rent some proper tools for the job if you don't want it to take forever!

So, to breakdown the process.....removing the old tile took one very long, messy day, tiling the kitchen and utility took three days overall with the tiler working in three hour bursts (he said he had to let each section set before he could move on?), a day to fix the plasterboard where the old backsplash had been removed, then the new backsplash took two days to tile and grout, and a final two visits to fit new skirting and edging strips where the floors meet and fix a few snags (like a wobbly toilet in the downstairs loo). A lot of these jobs could have definitely overlapped and saved a lot of time, but I guess the guys had other jobs on or something!

We were originally quoted €900 for the work, but due to us deciding to do the kitchen backsplash as well as the floor, and deciding to get a plumber in the remove and then re-install the toilet and sink in the downstairs loo (they could have tiled around them, but it would have been a much less tidy and thorough job) we ended up paying €1380 all in all. Tiles, grout etc cost us €700 altogether, with the floor costing €550 and the backsplash €150 all in.

The area we covered was 28 sq mt on the floor and 3 sq mt on the backsplash. We got all the tiles etc in World of Tiles as after extensive research they had far and away the best prices and selection in Limerick. We went with the "Phoenix Gris" (€12.99 a sq yd) tile on the floor with a matching grey grout to try and make it look a bit more seamless, as well as disguising when it eventually starts to get dingy! It's a really light, warm grey in a matte finish with a faint stone-like pattern on it that makes dirt a bit less obvious. Very important!

We went for a classic bevelled white subway tile (€15.99 a sq yd) on the backsplash, and although I love the look of a high contrast dark grout with a white tile (just look at my shower!) I decided to stick with white in here to avoid it getting a bit "busy". Plus, I've been enjoying a slightly more pared back look recently, so I'm happy for the kitchen to be a clean white backdrop that I can add interest to with accessories.

We used a guy called Joe Furlong to do the work. He had done work for us before that we were really happy with so we went with him again. He organised the tiler and the plumber and managed the whole thing, and by and large we were happy. The work is of really high quality, which we're delighted with. Could it have been done a bit quicker? Probably, but I suppose I'd rather have it done well and take a little bit longer!

What do you think? I'm really happy with it! I took so long to actually settle on the flooring in here so I was pretty shocked that my favorite option ended up being the cheapest! It took weeks to really get everything in here clean again after the dust but I'm delighted that I finally have a beautiful, easy to clean floor in here. All I need to do now is give the cupboards a fresh coat of paint in here and I'll have a totally fresh new kitchen!