25/01/02
Been taking some time over the last few weeks to look at materials. Specifically flooring. The plan is to tile the ground floor kitchen and lobby area as well as the extension main space and bedroom; something brick shaped and in a stacked bond layout, i.e. a grid. The vague idea being we would use something like the Barbican quarry tiles, both in colour and shape. They’re very pricey, crazy thick (20mm) and therefore heavy. Given the ground floor is suspended we needed something with a similar feel, but thinner and more affordable.
Lots of digging around kept throwing up what looked to be a bog standard Spanish terracotta tile. The sort of thing you might find around a swimming pool, or as below, laid out in a grid in a contemporary setting. It’s also got a mid-century vibe to it, and whilst this isn’t important to us, it does tip it’s hat to the age of the house. Cue more searching to finally stumble upon a store in Belgium that sells them. But again, not cheap and umm, Belgium. We finally worked out some of the images were of a tile by Ceramica Calaf in Barcelona - specifically a weirdly sized 27x13x1.3 tile. More sleuthing then spotted a place in Devon that imports them at a more reasonable price. Boom. The images below are of the orange version of the tile. There’s a subtle variation in colour between the tiles which is nice.
Been taking some time over the last few weeks to look at materials. Specifically flooring. The plan is to tile the ground floor kitchen and lobby area as well as the extension main space and bedroom; something brick shaped and in a stacked bond layout, i.e. a grid. The vague idea being we would use something like the Barbican quarry tiles, both in colour and shape. They’re very pricey, crazy thick (20mm) and therefore heavy. Given the ground floor is suspended we needed something with a similar feel, but thinner and more affordable.
Lots of digging around kept throwing up what looked to be a bog standard Spanish terracotta tile. The sort of thing you might find around a swimming pool, or as below, laid out in a grid in a contemporary setting. It’s also got a mid-century vibe to it, and whilst this isn’t important to us, it does tip it’s hat to the age of the house. Cue more searching to finally stumble upon a store in Belgium that sells them. But again, not cheap and umm, Belgium. We finally worked out some of the images were of a tile by Ceramica Calaf in Barcelona - specifically a weirdly sized 27x13x1.3 tile. More sleuthing then spotted a place in Devon that imports them at a more reasonable price. Boom. The images below are of the orange version of the tile. There’s a subtle variation in colour between the tiles which is nice.
The row below are of the same tile, but possibly in the slightly darker red colour? Not sure they look as good here, perhaps because of the thinner and lighter grout line that isn’t as flattering.
We settled on wood for the the ground floor living area, but again, went around the houses on what type and how it might look transitioning through to the tiles in the lobby area. The old five finger oak mosaic stuff is fun, but only available as a very labour intensive parquet. Given the contractors had priced in the laying of engineered planks, we had to work to that. The only thing that we could find that was A. engineered B. looked similar and C. just about kinda sorta affordable was an oak plank panel from Tarkett, called Noble Classic. Very trad plain oak in colour, laid out in a basket weave pattern. Again, a bit mid century, verging on the retro but should look nice in a more modern setting and also when butted up against the red/orangey tiles in the lobby. If money stretches it might eventually be used on the first floor.
