Your experience with natural stone flooring?

[SparrowInTheHedge]

DP and I decided we want natural stone flooring and want to go with country tumbled travertine in an opus pattern in our narrow galley kitchen and square dining room. It's a small house, the living room and tiny corridor will be engineered wood.

Anyway. Our builder is adamant that we should get porcelain tiles instead. He hates natural stone flooring with a venomous passion and I am, frankly, taken aback by his strong feelings on the matter.

Does anyone have travertine or any other stone flooring in their kitchen? I would love to hear your experiences as I am starting to doubt myself now.

I already posted on this question and got no replies so following for some here. I wondered about cleaning it.

Mollypolly2610

I wondered about cleaning it.

I know that i will need to seal and a steam mop is fine, but there's the theory and then there are real-life experiences.

Hoping I will get some reasponses in the morning!

My parents have it. They researched a lot and spent a lot. Supposedly theirs was top quality, most robust travertine out there. Nonetheless, water has eventually got in and some of the slabs are flaking and stained.

I also had travertine in a bathroom. The floor was fine but one tile in the shower got water behind and flaked and had to be replaced. Twice.

Travertine is a pretty porous stone, even with sealing and careful maintenance it is naturally full of holes and veins and weak spots. Realistically it is always going to be vulnerable.

If you want real stone flags I would go for something like Yorkstone as that is much denser (or a cheaper lookalike but choose carefully and be prepared for more staining). That’s still porous so can stain, unlike porcelain, but at least it doesn’t have the natural holes in it that travertine does. You can get reclaimed Yorkstone which will save costs and also give you the worn in look.

We put travertine in the kitchen and bathroom in our last house. Loved it. It looked beautiful and was perfectly hard wearing.

We’ve just put Belgian bluestone in our new bathroom here. It’s gorgeous. The builder had a hard time laying it because it was so heavy and a nightmare to cut - I think this is why a lot of builders don’t like it.

Oh and we’ve put limestone in our en-suite - no problems with it at all. It’s lovely. Much nicer than porcelain.

My sister has a huge area tiled with limestone and I pinched some of the left overs and we’ve tiled our en suite with them. Very thick, heavy tiles. Look lovely but has chipped in the en suite.

Travertine here too, we put underfloor heating in too, best thing ever
Yes it needs a good sealing first and specialist HG product to clean/mop it
But it looks beautiful, the larger the tile the larger the floor will look, dont go bittty and small in a small room. We laid it in brick bond format, put felt pads under all the furniture legs etc to save on wear.
Make sure the floor is dead level and that the stone tiles are all the same thickness as this will help the tiler get a level floor.
But be prepared to lose every cup you drop on the floor !
Enjoy

We have travertine and underfloor.

It's crap and when I do the extension I won't shed a tear for it