Pound Cake: Flooring Trials

My prediction last post of trial and error with the second floor flooring was pretty accurate. My first idea was a complete failure, but as these things often go, it was in the learning from that experience that I came up with a new idea to try. Let me state emphatically that the methods for achieving my goals here are probably not the smartest or best use of the technology, but only how I got around the challenges using my limited faculties and on hand supplies. Mostly, I just wanted to "Get 'Er Done" by any means necessary!

My first plan was to create a patterned tile floor in Design Space and use the Cricut to cut it. I was going to use chipboard in two thicknesses, a thinner one for the "grout" lines and the thicker for the actual tiles. I was planning to paint the tiles but did not know at that point whether or not I would actually grout the tiles in the traditional way, or just suggest grout with an offsetting color. But first, I had to design and cut the floor.

I found a tile design online that I thought would be nice for the small corner powder room and was also in keeping with the old time style of the building. It is made up of  honeycomb shaped tiles, so I found a similar clipart pattern online and imported it into Design Space. The grout lines of the image looked to be about the right thickness and proportion.

Powder Room Tile Inspiration

Honeycomb clipart

From there, I took careful measurements and created the shape of the bathroom floor using the shapes available in Design Space. Then I filled in the honeycomb pattern, incorporating a rectangle border which, hopefully, won't be completely covered by the baseboards. The powder room door's threshold will be on the diagonal line and will partially cover tiles here, too..

My first cutting attempt on .37 mm chipboard told me I'd have to rethink my plan. It takes so many passes with the knife blade to cut through the chipboard. Having the tiles so close together to create a 1/16" grout line causes a mess of delamination of the cardboard after only a few passes.

Back to the drawing board. What if I used a much thinner material that only required one or two passes, like kraft board? Would there be enough of a height difference from grout to tile to look authentic enough? I just happened to have an almost new pack of Cricut Kraft Board in a sample pack which contained 30 sheets of white, black and natural. This seemed worthy of a try, especially the prospect that with black grout and white tiles, I may not have to paint anything at all!.

The kraft board cut perfectly with only two passes, the default setting for Kraft Board in Design Space. It also calls for the standard fine point blade instead of the knife blade. I was able to cut the backer board in natural, the grout lines in black and then the tiles in white. I printed the white tiles twice so that I could double stack them to make the grout lines deeper.

Laying the tiles was like doing a fun puzzle. Because of the grout lines, each tile fit perfectly into place

Here's the floor sitting in it's place on the subfloor. To give you an idea of the size of the powder room, with square walls it would be 5" x 7". The tiles are 1/2".

Now that I knew the concept could work, I went ahead and created the tiles in the same way for the rest of the second floor. The way I have the space laid out, you come up the stairs into the stove and baking (right) side of the bakery. It is separated by an 8" long wall from the sink/dishwasher and cake decorating (left) side of the bakery.

Since the Cricut will only cut widths up to 11.5 inches, and because the areas of the bakery kitchen will be separated by a wall (made of 3/16" foam core), I divided the tile floors for the rest of the space in sections, though the tile design will be the same on both sides. For the sink/cake decorating side, I cut this shape:

For the Oven/Baking side, it is 15" deep so I had to create an additional narrow strip section and join them after cutting. I made extra whole white tiles to help camouflage the join in the back, but will use some type of threshold in the open doorway between the two sides of the kitchen where these tile pieces join.

I created the tiles in Design Space the same way as for the powder room, only this time I used a square diamond pattern and made the tiles 1" square. I again left the grout as a single layer, the white tiles double stacked, then printed 1/4" x 1/4" square black tiles to apply in all of the corners.

Here are how the floors look just laying on top of the subfloor. Where you see wood now are where the walls are planned. I will do some experimenting with shiny finishes for the tile floors on scrap tiles before I commit to applying anything to the real floors. Better safe than sorry, especially after all of the work to make them happen!

But first, while my daughter and I spend a long weekend celebrating my mom's 70th birthday with her in Arizona, these pieces will be under boards and weights to make them stay good and flat!

See you next week!

xo xo,
Jodi