Tiling

We decided to tile the entrance hall, boot room, utility room and bathrooms. All of these are wet areas and need a practical, hard wearing floor surface.

I initially favoured stone or slate as a floor material here, but after I discovered that regular sealing and maintenance would be required decided to take another route. Life is too short to be resealing floors regularly.

We’ve chosen porcelain stone-effect tiles. They’re non-slip, easy maintenance, strong and hard wearing. I’m promised that an occasional mop down is all that’s needed.

Not too dark as the bathrooms and entrance hall are north facing, and not too light so that I’m constantly washing the mud off them.

The only challenge was that we’d need to find a tiler to lay them. Husband didn’t feel that he could do a good job with grouting, although he’d be fine laying the tiles. On this island it would seem that finding a tiler is a practical impossibility, so we were pleased when an alternative solution presented itself to us. Thank you Universe 🙏

Luckily one of the plasterers we had working with us had a nephew in Glasgow who was a tiler and who was interested in coming up to do the work and bagging a few Munro’s in his spare time. (For you non mountaineers, this means climb a few challenging mountains whilst up here).

The other walls in the bathroom will be half clad in wood. It’s a softer finish than tiles and will provide a strong colour and texture contrast. We’re still finalising the finish – either a simple Osmo oil stain, or more radically a charred Shou Sugi Ban finish. Watch this space!