With a current emphasis on getting the kitchen sorted it was time to sort out some tiling. Another little milestone as it’s a final finish but as such it needed to spot on and fully authorised by the the other half.
A trip to the a DIY shed sorted the choice of tiles without too much trouble the only slight hesitation where ceramic floor tile that are textured and coulours to look like stone. Real stone would have been nice but the practicality for long term maintance, cleaning nunged us towards ceramic tiles. So we ended up these large rectangular tiles to be laid in a ” brick pattern. A relatively simple job to fit in a square room with a flat floor. Of course the kitchen in cottage isn’t square or flat and I didn’t want to raise the floor level any further by using a self levelling screed. Instead I ground chiseled the high spots back enough so I could vary the depth enough to end up with a flat floor. With smaller tiles it would have been possible to follower the floor to some extent but the large tile in this pattern would have meant noticeable steps at the joints.

Floor tiles on an uneven floor

The wall tiling for the cooker and sink splash-backs are also laid in the “brick” pattern so that also proved to take longer than normal on the wobbly walls. I could have plastered the brick wall but again I’m trying to squeeze as much space as possible so I tiled directly on the brick. Careful chipping away of any protruding bricks gave me flat result. The s tone around the sink did need plastering to give me anything like flat and square to work with.

Cooker and sink splashback tiling

Space saving in a kitchen at this level involves doing things differently from what you normally see. Taps for belfast sink are normally mounted on a bit worktop behind the sink, this is standard modern modular kitchens force you to do things. With our sink right oup to wall the taps had to be wall mounted. So before I could complete the tiling the taps had to chosen, bought and fitted.

Wall mounted kitchen taps over belfast sink. Making the most of available space

As with everything on this project all the tiling was fiddly and time consuming, but it’s the results that count. On that count I’m well chuffed and compared to bespoke kitchen cabinets and walls cupboard it all just a drop in ocean of time that this restoration is taking.