Fondovalle Wood Effect Ceramic Tiles
25 January 2010
“Rooming Like a Roman”
One of the ideas I have had for our kitchen still in the development stages is a wood floor, because of the warm look it brings to a kitchen and because of my own proclivities. I have been a woodworker for many years now, and will surely make our kitchen cabinets when the time comes. I have even thought of a wood countertop. And if that were to be the way of it, then the last piece in the puzzle would surely have to be a wood floor.
There are some drawbacks to that idea, though. The first is that I cannot lay a proper wood floor, because our home is built on a slab. However, there is any number of manufacturers that make various kinds of wood floors, ranging from actual thin slices of wood flooring to artificial wood-looking products. One objection that came to me, though, was the possibility of a broken water pipe in the kitchen. We did have a broken water hose some years ago (thank God we were home at the time) that put a lot of water on the floor. Had we been away, we might well have come home to a considerable amount of damage. And if that floor had been wood, yow!
The problem I encountered with the “looks-like-wood” products is that so many of them are a form of wood, in that they are made of wood flour glued together or plywood of some sort. All of these products, I hasten to add, shaped up just fine in everyday use, but the one worry was what would happen in the event of a flooded kitchen? Running a damp mop over them is not a problem, but putting them underwater for a couple of hours was certain to result in a fair amount of permanent water damage, and who wants that?
Well, as it turns out, the idea of a wood floor that is really just a floor that looks like wood is a concept that can been used in a number of different mediums, one of which is my own favorite blog subject, namely ceramic tile. That’s right, folks, the wooden floors you see in these pictures do not, in fact, have any wood in them. They are tile!
Fondovalle is an Italian company that has come up with a tile that really gives you the best of two worlds: the warm look of wood and the practicality of tiles. The Ironwood wood effect ceramic tiles we’ve shown here by Fondovalle have a wonderful soft wood grain throughout, but because they’re tile, not wood, they have a solid structure that’s made to last a lifetime. And the other attraction, for me at least, is that their so carefully matching the warmth and beauty of a wood floor makes them both elegant and timeless. And I hasten to add that the latter quality, timelessness, is both figurative and literal. These floors look as though they have always been here and always will be here. Well, as it turns out, they’re brand new, so part of that is false, but as for the rest, well, they’re tile, which means that they are pretty much guaranteed to outlast both me and thee. Face it; there are ruins of a number of ancient Roman villas with tile that is still intact.
Joseph
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3 Responses to “Fondovalle Wood Effect Ceramic Tiles”
January 5th, 2012 at 8:33 AM
Where can I purchase this tile in the US?
January 6th, 2012 at 6:35 AM
If you click on any of the pictures in this blog, the hyperlink will take you back to the website for the manufacturer.
January 6th, 2012 at 7:26 AM
Do you know of any US distributors for this specific tile? I have seen Fondovalle at US sites, but not the Ironwood ceramic tile.