Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Kitchen flooring material: ?anyone used ceramic tile?

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

I can't speak for common use, but we installed ceramic tiles in our last
house and UG. Yes, hard on the feet, but even worse, anything breakable
that dropped absolutely *shattered**. *And although it didn't happen in the
year we had the floor before we moved, we were always scared of something
breaking a tile. Finally, the grout made it a pain to clean.

It doesn't sound like a good choice for a common kitchen to me, especially
since so many people come and go (in my experience) and breakage is
inevitable.

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 9:37 AM, Catya Belfer <catya [at] pobox.com> wrote:

> As someone who spends a lot of time cooking in our common house kitchen,
> I'd say: NOT STONE.  Ow, my feet :)
>
> Ours is, I believe, epoxy over wood, it's held up well for 9 years so far.
> We have the grittyness in it to keep it from being super slippery, which
> makes cleaning it something of a chore, but nothing unmanageable.
>
>      - cat
>
> Catya Belfer   -  www.catya.org
> Technical Director   -   www.cohousing.org
> Cohousing in MA - www.mosaic-commons.org
>
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 3:15 PM, Ruth J Hirsch <heidinys [at] earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Thank you very much, Dick.  Already helpful!
> > This is for the CommonHouse kitchen
> > Over wooden sub floor.
> >
> > ruth
> >
> >
> > On Mar 11, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Dick Margulis <dick [at] dmargulis.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/11/2018 2:22 PM, Ruth J Hirsch wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > We are looking at kitchen flooring material.
> > > Complicated decision.
> > > Someone has suggested ceramic.  Has anyone actually had experience with
> > this?
> > > Concerns include:  breakage of items dropped and how does the grout
> wear?
> > > Appreciate your input
> >
> > Does the question concern home kitchen or common house kitchen? The
> > concerns are similar but not identical.
> >
> > The first issue is what's the subfloor constructed of? If this is a
> > suspended wooden floor (over a basement or crawl space, in other words),
> > then there is some give to the floor, and in a home kitchen the wear and
> > tear on knees might not be a major issue. If the tile is to be laid on a
> > concrete slab, though, and if this is to be in the common house, where
> meal
> > prep can take a few hours, I can tell you from personal experience that
> > some people will experience significant knee pain over time. Maybe other
> > joints and spine, too. (I worked for several years in a commercial bakery
> > that had a ceramic tile floor over a concrete slab. Yeah, there's a
> > difference between two hours of meal prep and fifty hours a week of heavy
> > lifting, so it's a matter of degree, I guess.)
> >
> > Breakage is definitely a problem. This applies not just to glassware and
> > china but also to knives (and you do not want steel shards flying around
> > any more than you want glass shards flying around).
> >
> > Grout can be problematic. If the floor is not sloped to a floor drain,
> > standing water (from spills or from mopping) can erode and lift grout if
> > there are any imperfections. Grout can be dug out and repaired when that
> > happens, but if the kitchen is in daily use, there may not be enough time
> > for the patch to fully cure, and the cycle will continue.
> >
> > Dick Margulis
> > Rocky Corner cohousing
> > Bethany CT
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > PS:  I have an intermittent e-mail glitch.  If you write and do not hear
> > back from me shortly, please call me or please re-send.  Thank you,  Ruth
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
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