We started working on the kitchen floor yesterday. We are butt jointing all of the tiles (no gap) which makes it a more difficult task as opposed to having a gap between each seem that would allow you to fudge the measurements a bit.
After measuring the entire room, determining the center point and determining which part of the room is going to be the focal point, we laid out the tiles so that all of the cuts would be against the wall on the right and or under the cabinets once they are completely installed. The entrance has full tiles as will the main work area of the kitchen. The first few rows of marble that were installed need to sit for 48 hours to completely cure before they start making cuts and laying the sides. They’ll need to walk on them which means they need to be completely set and dry.
The factory cuts of the marble are not perfect, some of them are a little bit thicker at one end vs the other and some of the edges have tiny areas that look beveled. I don’t know if that is how all marble is, or if that is a bi-product of buying marble in Puerto Rico. There are going to be some small gaps that we’ll have to fill in with a grout at the end of the day. Gino suggested we grind up broken pieces of the marble to create a grout that matches color perfectly. We’ll see…do any of you have experience with a decision like this?
Here are some pictures of the progress:
Popularity: 16% [?]
Someone should tell Jerry that it’s impossible to cut marble tile with a hand saw…
Other then that, The floor looks AWESOME! When can we get rid of that ugly green paint?
I think I would paint the window walls Bear OffWhite to go with floor and then the other wall with something fun and wild like jungle green. But that is just me! Or….with your dad coming down have him do the shadow plants that I invented on the bold wall where you set light on floor pointing up toward wall/ceiling and jungle plant between wall and light. Then outline the giant jungle plant silhouette with pencil and then paint silhouette jungle green. I know he has done it before. haha
Haha…I can totally see my hippy parents, stoned and painting jungle plants on the wall…haha
Lovely big tiles you have there.
We laid some smaller travertine marble (12″ sq) in a small bathroom. They had small bevelled edges as well. We did have the same problem of a wee gap in one area that I haven’t got around to fixing.
The ground down marble seems like a good idea, what will you use as binder for the dust? I thought of mixing it with some of the floor impregnator.
I’ll wait to see how yours come out first.
I would go with a brand of grout that you could get again because sometimes you need to patch or something. If not the right color you can mix. I did one ugly mallard green to one dellorian grey to match my botanical green slate. It was perfect and I can replicate since it was 1 to 1 mix. I bought from Home Depot and it has been decent stuff.
The floor looks sooo sick!