Friday 10 June 2011

Tometting Deux

We arrived home yesterday (after a 16 hour day with Célestine) to find our new kitchen floor fully laid and looking good. Patrick has achieved more in a day and a half than we would have managed in a week, and with a lot less mess (there isn't a drop of glue on any of the tiles).

The "bridge" isn't strictly nescessary,
but acts as a visual cue as to where we
can't step for the next 24 hours
There is no doubt that these are a natural, artisan product, even if machine made. They are all of slightly different thickness and size, and the colour varies subtly. The main difference between these and the old (vieillis) fully handmade tile is that these have a definite "good" face, whereas as the old tiles you can choose which side up to lay them, and they also have less variation in colour than the old tiles. They are also slightly stripey - where they have been through the machine you can see where they have been wiped. With the old tiles this adds a real handmade feel, whereas on the new tiles it is slightly too even.

Having said all that, they are still amazing and will look ace once we have finished them and done the joints.

Simon

7 comments:

Craig said...

The floor looks gorgeous! Well worth using a tiler.

Simon said...

Craig - if I was the sensitive type I would be offended ;¬) I know what you mean though.

We did various bits of tomette laying 2 yeara ago but although the results were brilliant we were so slow!

Jean said...

Great progress! It's always worth employing someone else to do the really tricky or tedious jobs, it saves on the swearbox expenses !!

GaynorB said...

WOW!
The floor looks great and you got to spend the day riding around in Celestine. Wins all round!

Emm said...

Beautiful floor. "done the joints" -- do you have to put something in between them now? I thought they were glued down.

Simon said...

Emm

Good point :¬) The traditional way to lay tomettes was to lay them as close as possible to each other on a bed of lime mortar. The little gaps between them filled in with stuff that fell from the table.

These days they are glued with a gap of about 1cm between them which is then filled with the lime mortar. the mortar binds the whole lot together and stops the tiles from moving about

Anonymous said...

even on the internet the color is ravishing.

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