Miles of Tiles

I’ve been hiding a dirty little secret. Well, a few of them actually. Of course when I share photos of my home I try to capture it from its good side. Who would want to show off ugly carpeting, old linoleum and drafty windows? Well, the truth is that I have all of those and more. So instead of trying to hide them from you I decided to share them with the world. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Well, I’ve got quite a few.

First up, this kitchen floor, a caramel and white checkerboard of linoleum tiles. It’s just not my cup of tea. I’m hoping that there’s hard wood underneath it somewhere, although I do know that one layer down is yet another layer of linoleum, so I haven’t yet worked up the courage to chisel it away for a peek just yet, not to mention the potential asbestos exposure lurking underneath:

Not only do I dislike the material, the colors and the pattern, but the tiles are dingy and stained, and no matter how hard I scrub them I still end up with this:

While a kitchen remodel is definitely in the plans for us, we want to tie our kitchen into a new family room and a beautiful new deck leading to our backyard, and a project of that scale comes with quite a large price tag. I would love to be able to do it in phases, but it just doesn’t seem to make sense for us (since turning our bedroom into a family room means turning the den into our bedroom, and adding a deck off the kitchen means moving the location of the garage.) So for now it looks like I’m stuck with this crazy linoleum tile. I’ve hunted around for kitchen rugs to try to cover it up, and also warm up the floor, which can be quite cold in the morning, but everything I had seen was too small, too big, expensive or clashed terribly with the caramel tiles. Until I remembered my old friend FLOR, that had helped me out so nicely in our den. Not only could I create something the exact size that I needed, I would be able to choose from a ton of colors and durability options, as well as just pick one up and rinse it off if something got spilled (which happens frequently in the kitchen!) We decided to pick up the blue color in these backsplash accent tiles and went with House Pet in Chameleon:

12 tiles seemed like they would fit perfectly, and thanks to 50% off shipping by ordering through the local store and another 10% off from an online coupon code I found, I was able to virtually buy them tax free. They arrived yesterday and we couldn’t wait to plop them down:

I love them! Not only do they cover up the flooring I was trying to hide, but I feel like they just make the room look more polished. What do you think?