Last week I was in a bit of a funk. The kitchen floor tile revelation (ie the fact that I couldn’t find replacement tiles anywhere) hit me hard, and I was struggling to come to terms with the idea that we might need to expand the budget and scope of the renovation as a result. And so I complained about it in a post and half-heartedly asked for feedback…and you guys blew me away. I got SO many helpful ideas that have me feeling re-energized about the possibilities, and I’m incredibly grateful. Thank you!

Today I wanted to share back some of what I heard in case it’s helpful to anyone else who has faced this particular conundrum or more generally is stuck on a renovation issue and needs some words of wisdom. And then I’m totally going to take advantage of all your awesome creativity and enthusiasm to ask you for some more feedback. One of you wrote the following at the end of a long and thoughtful comment: “Sorry this was so long, its really your fault for making your commenters feel like part of the process.” Mission accomplished, and I will totally be taking advantage of that throughout this entire renovation process because in case you haven’t noticed, I have no idea what I’m doing and I need some help.

First up, the floors.

The advice broke out into five main suggestions:

Get creative about finding the matching tile. People suggested checking the back of the tile I’d torn up to see if I could find a manufacturer; going direct to the home builder to find the source; using the free shipping Home Depot offers on orders over $49 to order a bunch of tiles and see if any match; and using Builddirect.com’s 5 free samples policy to search for a match. Unfortunately there are no manufacturer marks and the house was built in the 1950s, but if I decide to stick with the tile we have then Home Depot shipping and Build Direct will be top of my list to try out.

Repurpose the tile from a place it doesn’t matter. A few people asked if I could steal good tiles from somewhere like a closet or area that will be covered in order to fill in the visible gaps. In my case I don’t have any spots like this, but one possibility is robbing from the small area between the kitchen, hallway, bedroom, and bathroom. I could conceivably tear up the tile there and replace just that area for much cheaper than doing the whole kitchen and sunroom, and if I can get enough intact unbroken tiles out could replace the missing sections. Here’s the area in question:

Do something cool with mixed patterns or even materials to cover the missing areas. One reader suggested embracing the gaps and designing a multi-substrate or multi-colored pattern to work around them. There are definitely some really cool concepts out there:

Granted my tiles aren’t as cool as the hexagonal ones in the top photos, but maybe there’d be something I could do that would look interesting!

Paint it. A few folks shared some really cool ideas for painting tile floors, suggesting that I consider doing this as a shorter term solution while I save up for new floors. Pinterest proves that this can look pretty darn awesome:

Replace it! Since I don’t love the floor, it seems a little crazy to be going to so much effort to keep it. Many of you who have been through renovations encouraged me to replace it — either splurge for it now, or if we just can’t add it to the budget then save up for it and do it later on. A lot of you said you hadn’t sprung for this when you did big renovations, and really regretted it down the road when the dust settled (literally). Replacing the floor would definitely open up a whole new world of color schemes since my original plans were designed around contrasting with the pinkish brown tiles.

So what am I going to do? Well the truth is that right now I just can’t commit to another splurge in the budget. We haven’t done the biggest and most expensive part of the work yet (taking down the wall), so until we know whether that comes in on, under, or over budget I don’t want to decide anything final on the floors. So the plan is that I have a lot of great options to consider because of your feedback, and once we do the big demo in April (so soon!) we will be able to decide what path makes sense for us. Stay tuned, and thank you again so much!

And given that you were so incredibly helpful when it came to the floors, I need some more feedback: the bright blue counters! Do we keep them, or replace them?

Just kidding, the counters have to go. But I’m not kidding about needing feedback. My original thinking was to do white corian on the main “L.” I’ve heard great things about it and I like the look, but it’s also pretty affordable as counters go — it would be about $1,000 for that space, which is about as much as our budget can take. I’m planning to do dark cabinets (dark gray or maybe navy), so I like the idea of white counters to contrast plus I always find that light counters actually look clean longer — our dark counters right now show crumbs immediately and I’m constantly wiping them down.

Then on the island and coffee bar, I’d do DIY butcher block. I love the butcher block look and would love to do it throughout the kitchen, but I don’t want to be one of those high maintenance people who runs around after every guest, child, and husband scolding them for spilling, leaving standing water, putting hot things down, trying to use the counters as cutting boards, etc. And the idea of needing to reseal the counters on any sort of recurring basis that’s more frequent than like 5 years does not appeal to me.

Okay so maybe I am just trying to totally rip off the kitchen that Chris Loves Julia just finished?

Though actually I know their counters are white concrete — but they seemed like a ton of work and still cost close to $1,000 so I’m not convinced that it’s a DIY worth doing given everything else we’re taking on. But I’d love to hear from you guys: am I right in my assessment of butcher block being too high maintenance for me on the main cooking surfaces? Are there DIY options I should consider? If anyone has ideas they’ve tried or seen I’d love to hear them! I’ll just sit back and let you guys do all the brainstorming work for me….