Homebase Vinyl Tiles for Kitchens/Bathrooms > Reviews (6)

My fiancé and myself wanted to renew our kitchen flooring reasonably cheaply but also with something we could attempt ourselves. We opted for vinyl floor tiles that you just stick on. I knew my mum had used these in her conservatory and kitchen and they had worn well. I also remember helping her and my dad get the old ones up! Once down they stay down!!

We went to Homebase and we chose their Sanctuary Vinyl Tiles - slate bodmin. They are advertised as having the appearance of slate. They come in packs of 11, an odd amount I thought, and each tile is 30.5cm square. They are 1.5mm thick and 1 pack of tiles will cover 1.023sq meters. Each pack cost £5.93, so armed with our tiles we headed home.
As these vinyl tiles are sticky backed there is no need to buy any glue or extras so the price of the tiles is really all there is.

When it comes to laying the tiles its not really too difficult.. Our kitchen floor is concrete so we just made sure it was swept and clean. The first thing we did was to find the centre of the floor. This is easily done by drawing a line diagonally from corner to corner. Where they cross should be roughly the centre of the floor. Once you have your starting point its just a matter of peeling the paper backing from the tile and sticking it in place, making sure you press firmly all over the tile. Just work your way out from the centre until you reach the walls. This is where it does get a bit harder. You will need to cut your tiles to fit around the edge and round any pipes or corners you may have. The lovely thing about these tiles is that they are thin enough to cut with a good pair of scissors which does make for a neater cut. You can use a Stanley knife but we got on better with the scissors. It is sometimes easier to make some paper templates of the tiles and then use them as patterns for the harder to fit areas. We did this when it came to the pipes and it saved us ruining a few of the tiles. Once the tiles are laid you should avoid washing your floor for a week.

Mark and I completed our kitchen floor in one weekend. This is probably a long while for an expert but we had never done anything like this before and even though I say it myself we made a good job of it between us! The tiles look great, they do resemble slate and of course they are much warmer underfoot. They've been down for a month now and we have had no problems at all. Even when the washing machine decided to flood the kitchen. The tiles stayed firmly in place, I was well chuffed (not with the washing machine, that's another story!).

If you are looking to lay new flooring I would 100% recommend Homebase Vinyl Floor Tiles. They come in a variety of prices starting at £2.99 so they wont break the bank and as you are only dealing with a small tile each time they are relatively simple to fit. I'm sure we couldn't have fitted the flooring ourselves if it had been one large piece of vinyl. What we also liked was the fact that we didn't have to empty the whole room, we just moved things around and when it came to the fridge freezer and washing machine we only had to pull them out, lay the tiles and then push them back. It was all very convenient.

Summary: A great way to spruce up your floor.