Laura’s Scandi-Industrial Kitchen: Customer Style Focus

Laura has been renovating a London Victorian terrace house and used our Cinereous Grey Tiles, which have a trendy concrete effect design, to transform the kitchen floor! The musician, who performs under the stage name FEMME, has answered some questions about the project…

How would you describe your room before you decorated it, and what made you decide to decorate?

We moved into our Victorian terrace house in South East London in December knowing that we had a complete renovation project on our hands. This house had previously been in one family for over 100 years! But had not been decorated since the 60s/70s so it needed a lot of TLC. We decided to start with the kitchen as it was the biggest job and where the majority of the structural work needed to be carried out.

What inspired the look you went for in the room?

My partner is half Finnish and we’ve both always had a love for clean, fresh Scandinavian inspired interiors. We wanted to maximise light in the room so installed bi-fold doors at the end which flood the room with natural light and we kept the walls and tiling pure white – the space now feels so spacious and airy! We’ve added pops of colour with house plants and furniture and the concrete effect tiles compliment the super matt kitchen units perfectly.

What drew you to the tiles you chose?

We wanted to add a little industrial touch to the room. Something modern but not super slick or shiny. In our last project we went for natural slate floors but this time we wanted to try something new.

Did you do the tiling work yourself, or did you hire a tiler?

We had our builders who took care of the whole job do the tiling.

What part of the project did you find the most challenging?

We didn’t employ an architect for this project because we are both quite confident in our abilities to plan and visualise a room, and we know what we like! However that didn’t stop us worrying once the walls started coming down that we’d made the right decisions with layout. Thankfully, it’s turned out just as we planned. We’ve maximised the space, we’ve added a downstairs WC which was much needed and there’s plenty of storage so it remains a practical kitchen.

Have you had any compliments on your project, from your family and friends?

Everyone is overwhelmed with the transformation! We had a NYE party for friends just after we moved in and I think a lot of them were probably left wondering why we’d bought the place! Thankfully now they can see the vision for it and get an idea of what the whole house will look like once we’ve finished it.

After this project, do you have any more decorating projects lined up around the house?

Next up is the family bathroom upstairs. It needs a complete overhaul, there is currently a brown bathroom suite and wood panelling on the walls!? It’s another big job that we’ll get started on this summer but once that’s completed the rest is just painting and decorating.

What would you say to people who are thinking about buying tiles from Walls and Floors?

We had a great experience with Walls and Floors, super helpful and speedy service. We realised 3/4 of the way through laying the floors in the kitchen that we had underestimated how tiles many we needed, we desperately got online at Walls and Floors and ordered more and thankfully they arrived so promptly that they didn’t hold up the job.

If you love Laura’s concrete effect look, click here to order a sample: Cinereous Grey Tiles.