Front Shoppe Tile Transitioning

With our one year shoppe anniversary shortly approaching, I wanted to share our much-requested shoppe entrance tile. When designing our entrance to the shoppe a year ago, I had my eyes set of this stunning "aged" blue tile from Elite Tile. The tile is called Alberta Ceramic Field Tile. I grabbed a sample off of Wayfair and fell in love with its patina-like style and faded french blue colors. 

We opted for a different transition because I wanted a whimsical and different way to merge the tile into our laminate flooring. One of my favorite features of the front entrance is this transition, too. The tile arrives in a 13"x13" square but looks like the tiles are 6.5"x6.5" separate pieces which made the transition a bit easier to ease into. With the tile being one large tile, it comes with a red grout between the smaller quarters. I knew that I would be using a charcoal caulk between the tile and laminate transition and because of that, I re-grouted the red to the charcoal throughout.

Before we laid the rest of the laminate flooring, we glued down our tiles just the way we wanted it but we held off on grouting around the outter most transition until the entire laminate floor had been laid. 

This was the first time we had tried our hand at something so angular and difficult but we took it slowly. The transition is by far not perfect and I learned some lessons for next time. Since our floor in the entry wasn't completely level, it caused some issues with how the tiles laid. We were on a bit of a time crunch so we made do and just layered up the tile adhesive (not smart but it worked).

We also had the floating laminate flooring meeting the tile so I was a bit weary on how to grout the outer most edges of the tile that meet the laminate. We ended up using a concrete caulk that matched the color of our tile grout so that it would flex more with the expanding and contracting of the laminate flooring through the various Ohio humidities. If I were to do this transition again, I would have glued our laminate flooring down around those meeting points so that it cuts down on that movement and makes things more secure.

Another change I would have made was to clean up the laminate angled cuts. You can see all the unlevel cuts and dings because of the color difference between the light wood and dark charcoal grout... very small flaw but could still be refined for a cleaner look.

Overall, I love this tile and its transition into the laminate flooring. We get the most wonderful compliments on the tile and many ask if the tile is original because of its faux aged look. I've ordered a handful of tiles from Elite Tile on Wayfair and every time I've been blown away for their ability to make the tiles look aged and beautiful.

Do you like this different transition in the shoppe? If you ever get the chance, pop on in to take a look yourself and visit with us!

Hugs, Alyssa