Flooring for rural period kitchen/dining

[Babamamananarama]

Hi all

I'm looking for ideas and wisdom for flooring for our kitchen/breakfast room when we renovate it.

It's a Victorian country house in a very rural area. High traffic area, in the winter there is loads of mud/dog etc so we need something practical and that won't need hoovering/mopping every 5 minutes. Currently there's dark wood effect vinyl which I hate with a passion but is practical in that it doesn't show the dirt!!

I'd like something like terracotta tiles but worried they'll be too cold underfoot. It's a cold part of the house and floor is concrete underneath. Underfloor heating not really an option as we'd have to excavate 30cm of concrete floor.

I'm not a fan of materials which look like something else eg wood effect Karndean.

What options should I be considering?

We just put porcelain tiles down. Yes they’re cold underfoot, we laid them over an electric heat mat but we are way too stingy to run it (do for guests at Christmas) so we just wear slippers.

@MyAnacondaMight

You can have warm, durable and easy to clean. But, without underfloor heating, you can only have 2 out of 3.

I’m going for terracotta effect porcelain tiles: www.marlboroughtiles.com/finish/terracotta-effect I’ve seen them in person and you can’t tell the difference. Cold, but I wear slippers downstairs anyway.

Don't porcelain tiles tend to crack if they're in heavy traffic areas? I'm glad OP started this thread, as I have the same problem. I have quarry tiles in part of the downstairs, and they're covered with a huge rug because they are cold and noisy (when you scrape dining chairs along the floor). I have the original floorboards in the remainder, but they are now looking very scruffy. Maybe I just need to be bothered to re-sand and re-varnish them.

OP, does the house have an Aga?

Mine were sealed both times and still a mare. The dogs weren’t the problem it was the mucky boots ( I would like to blame the men folk but was also guilty of nipping in to grab something) and just the general day to day muck. It gathers in those riven bits and on the pointing. Greasy food being dropped (dp and children), paint and glitter (children and I).
Interestingly my mother has carpet and that stays clean and warm. She does shampoo it every so often and replace it every 5 years.

Porcelain tiles. You can get ones that look incredibly like natural stone. Or just get ones that don't try to look like natural stone. I am v fussy and hate imitation stuff. I have porcelain tiles that look like a sort of sandstone and look so natural.
Bear in mind if you go for terra cotta or other natural stone you will have to seal it every year. And you will have wider grout lines that are harder to clean. And sometimes you have to remove the remains of the old sealant before you can apply a fresh coat each year.

Also if you decide warmth is top priority.... I laid underfloor pipes on top of the concrete (with a layer of insulation between the concrete and pipes). And then engineered oak straight on top. So you don't gain too much height compared to traditional underfloor methods. The boards are resting on battens and we cut out notches in the battens for the pipes to pass through. So the top of the boards are approx 3 inches from the top of the concrete. We have very low ceilings in an old cottage so I didn't want to lose height but wanted warmth.

Bamboo is MUCH harder wearing than oak. Here is a herringbone effect one: www.bambooflooringcompany.com/all-flooring/construction-type/strand-woven-flooring/solid-carbonised-strand-woven-90mm-parquet-block-bona-coated-bamboo-flooring.html

Marmoleum? By Forbo Nairn, it's renewable, easy to look after and warm under foot, I'd get the tile version and have two vintagey colours. It's what I'll be getting when we upgrade our floor.

I agree about Karndean. We have Karndean parquet in our kitchen/diner/family room - it was very expensive (£120 sq m) promised to be very hard-wearing, is two years old and very worn from chairs etc- scratched surface. We put the felt pads on the furniture as advised, change them regularly and have been very careful with it. I hate it. Waste of money.

This one raises the floor by 18mm. Another benefit of lvt is it’s thin.

We have a vinyl floor, by Armstrong Rhino floor.
Similar to this: www.armstrongflooring.com/residential/en-us/vinyl-flooring/vinyl-sheet/cushion-step-better/item/B3382.html
Looks like tiles, has been down 25 years and other than when I dropped a sharp knife vertically point down onto it (just missing my foot) it still looks good as new, doesn't scratch despite the dog. Our kitchen has an effective walkway from hall to back door and even after 25 years hard use there isn't any obvious sign of wear even on the most used bit. People always assume it is tiles. It's warm under foot. Very easy to keep clean, but the tile pattern hides a multitude of sins (not in fact washed it for longer than a fortnight). It's also softer than tiles/wood - much of our china has bounced at some point!
For domestic use this has a 25 year guarantee too.

• the knife point is just a 1 cm line that congregates the dirt a little. If I have washed the floor you do not notice it.

We live in a Victorian terrace and have the original red tile floor. Complete with cracks and ancient smoothed concrete in places, but I love it.

By red, I mean terracotta………

I have a period kitchen and went for oak Karndean. I know you said you don't like it

Being warm underfoot was v important to me after having a much hated terracotta floor.

I agonized about having real wood and whether the Karndean would look rubbish but actually the one I chose looks pretty much like engineered oak and I'm delighted with it.

I have engineered oak, its been down 14 years, still looks great. it was a very expensive type though, it has a thick top layer of oak. it can be sanded several times. It really hides the filth😂 I have solid oak upstairs, which I prefer the look of (deeper notches in it)

I actually covered the original stone flags! My previous house had them and they were very cold, hard and everything smashed if you dropped it. Plus they always looked filthy!

@Ariela

What if you pulled an appliance out though, eg dishwasher wouldn't that tear it?

Terracotta looks awful. What colour kitchen units do you / will you have? They will surely clash!

Go for neutral tiles and instal under floor heating. When you mop, the floor dries in an instant

I am loving all of this info.
Bamboo is an option I hadn't considered but I like that herringbone one.

I really don't think UFH is an option for us - the rooms have 3 doors leading off and we'd end up with three thresholds with at least a 2" difference once you factor in the height of the flooring that goes on top of the UFH. It would be a trip hazard unless we dug out the whole floor.

There is an AGA but bizarrely it's in an adjacent room (which we use as a dining room) - our house has a very strange layout. Long term we will probably phase the aga out for environmental reasons so we aren't planning to move it into the kitchen when we re-do it. But the breakfast room does have a fireplace so we are planning to add a wood burner so it can become a cosy snug in the evenings. The rooms are quite cold and dark currently but I'm hoping to add a roof light and possibly a light well, and create a cosier vibe than it currently has.

Re unit colour - I'm open minded about this and would choose it to work with the floor. My ideal kitchen would have this sort of vibe:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQoc7LSgbdI/?utmmedium=copyy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNkmZforK5X/?utmmedium=copyy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTXs0xNKlT7/?utmmedium=copyy_link

[quote UrgentHelpforFriend]@Ariela

What if you pulled an appliance out though, eg dishwasher wouldn't that tear it?[/quote]
I'll admit we only have a cooker and a fridge in the kitchen, the vinyl doesn't go under kitchen units other than the cooker as the unit were in situ, we've had the cooker out a few times to thoroughly clean and there are no tears. The fridge is a replacement and effectively free standing in a corner, there are slight dimples where the feet were if I move it about - but no tears.
Rhino floor is essentially industrial flooring quality, so I wouldn't expect it.