Kitchen Fear....

[Biscuit357]

Hello All,

We're about to start a rear kitchen extension (on Tuesday....eeks!) and my mind is in a spin so I thought I'd use you lovely ladies for some wise input.

With the kitchen we have (pretty much) decided on F&B Pigeon painted doors, range cooker, belfast sink, lots of open shelving etc. (hopefully you can picture it) but am having a nightmare with flooring and worktops.

1. Flooring - we are having underfloor heating and we told that stone would be better than wood for conducting the heat. What stone? Do we go dark or light? I quite like the tumbled look but his that a bit odd as we live in a victorian terrace and not a cotswold cottage!
   
   
2. Worktop - dark or light? Wood or corian or granite or quartz or marble!!!
   
   Help please!
   
   x

[SwedishEdith]

Flooring - quarry tiles? They look pretty Victorian

[jammietart]

Like pigeon a lot. We're just about to do our kitchen and our designer has suggested a similar colour green with a grey porcelain floor tiles and traditional marble work tops. A bit plain english in style. I don't think it's what we are going for but I do like the look. We had granite in our last kitchen and it was really fab, very easy to use and maintain.

[betterwhenthesunshines]

Stone or tile - But I would go for a large porcelain tile - no sealing needed and a thinner tile will transfer heat well.

Works tops - just not black granite!

We have a mottled granite which hides the slatternly mess odd crumb well. Ours is warm in tone, but Kashmire white has some green in it and would look great with Pigeon I think. Marble stains very easiliy so I would avoid that.

[CocoNutter]

Depends on what shape you're looking for really but if money were no object I'd opt for corian. Marble stains, as betterwhenthesunshines said, and you can't use a lot of cleaners on it. Corian can be moulded to fit any shape so no irritating joints between pieces.

[Biscuit357]

Thank you so much for your replies (I don't post on forums very often so am always so chuffed when people bother to read my posts!)

I've googled Plain English and that's exactly the style I'm after.

I've never considered porcelain tiles (went too far down the limestone/slate/travertine route) but will some research.

Not a great tidier upper so a mottled granite could work well.

[skandi1]

River white granite could work well. If you get it honed rather than polished it will look whiter and hide dirt/finger prints better.

Marble is fine. I have bianco Carrara extra honed. A good sealer such as Dry Treat with a 15 year guarantee will see that you don't have staining. Get honed marble rather than polished though.

I like limestone floors even in a Victorian terrace. Look at Mandarin Stone. They currently have a 15% sale on. You could go with a honed limestone which has a straight edge rather than a tumbled or aged product. That said I love St Abois limestone and Tumbled Dijon. I have tumbled Dijon in one bathroom. It's beautiful.

I have wood flooring in kitchen. It's great and looks great. But no under floor heating. I only have that in the bathrooms under limestone where it works well so I can't comment on performance under wood.

[CointreauVersial]

How about a creamy-coloured ceramic tiled floor?

[fossil971]

I would look at Marlborough tiles for porcelain floor tiles for a country style kitchen. We had some samples and they are lovely close-up. Basically porcelain is a better kind of ceramic used for making fake-stone tiles. So they have stone-like or limestone-like ones etc., it's not shiny porcelain like a bathroom suite IYSWIM.

[CointreauVersial]

Deffo don't go for shiny.

Unless you want to see every footprint, smear and strand of hair.

My sis has a shiny kitchen floor and it needs mopping and buffing on a daily basis.

A matte finish and a few mottles is what you want.