Now that spring has at last arrived, it’s time to start planning those home improvement projects you’ve been dreaming about over the winter.
Over the past few weeks we’ve had several requests for advice about creating or restoring a traditional garden path using our Victorian-style geometric tiles.
As this one of our favourite subjects we thought we’d put our top tips online to help you get started.
1. Get the timing right
2. Hire an expert and book in advance
We strongly recommend you employ a professional tiler who specialises in laying Victorian-style geometric tiles. In addition to ensuring your new garden path is perfect, expert tilers will help you to calculate the correct quantity of tiles for the job – so you won’t waste money by ordering too many or be left short. Book your tiler as soon as you know when you want to have the work done – the best ones tend to get very busy, especially over the summer months. You can search online for a specialist tiler near you.
3. The design
Now for the fun part! Whatever look you want to achieve, our geometric tiles are hugely versatile and adaptable, with an almost limitless combination of shapes and colours to choose from. At Original Features you can pick one of our traditional Victorian patterns, go for something more contemporary or create your own bespoke design. The choice is yours! Please contact us if can’t find what you are looking for on our website, or if you would like some design advice.
4. Your tiles – invest in quality
Once you have decided on your design, make sure you invest in quality tiles. Original Features’ Olde English geometric tiles are fully vitrified, which means that they have been fired to a very high temperature and so are extremely hard wearing, fully frost resistant and absorb less moisture and dirt than other types of tile.
5. Looking after your new tiled path
Our Olde English tiles are easy to maintain. Use a specialist maintenance cleaner to wash your path regularly. Exterior tiling should never be sealed as this will compromise frost resistance. You’ll find more information about cleaning your tiles here.
Original Features' colourful geometric tiles are manufactured in very much the same way as they were in Victorian times. The countless original paths that have survived intact for over 150 years all around the UK bear testament to their beauty and longevity. Follow our advice and you will become the proud owner of a beautiful tiled pathway that will enhance your home for many, many years to come. Enjoy!
]]>How the Victorians began our love affair with kitchen tiles
Whatever kind of home you live in – a period property with original features or a sleek, minimalist apartment with lots of glass and light, our traditional ceramic wall and floor tiles are a wonderful way of putting your personal stamp on your kitchen, the most sociable room in your house.
The Victorians had a very different approach: in the nineteenth century, kitchens were private spaces and even wealthy homeowners wasted little expense on decorative features. The Victorian householder would have considered money spent on elaborate ceramic wall and floor tiles as inappropriately extravagant for rooms frequented mostly by domestic staff.
However, they appreciated tiles not just for their decorative possibilities, but also because they were practical. Plain glazed earthenware tiles were commonly used on walls in kitchens, dairies and other functional rooms to protect the places that received the most wear and tear. These were usually in pale colours such as white, ivory, buff and cream, which reflected the light and showed the dirt in areas where hygiene was important. And kitchens, sculleries and service passages often had floors made up of cheap quarry tiles in plain unglazed red clay or alternating red with blue-black.
Today things could not be more different. Indeed, of all the rooms in the house, it’s the kitchen that seems to have undergone the biggest transformation since the nineteenth century. Twenty-first century kitchens are very much above stairs – ideally large, light and airy social spaces, equipped not just for cooking but for family life and entertaining friends. And millions of us enjoy choosing tiles that will make our kitchen into a unique personal space.
Create your dream kitchen with tiles from Original Features:
The great news is that whether you want your kitchen to be Victorian in style, sleekly modern, quirky country cottage or something just distinctively ‘you’, Original Features can help.
If you are after authentic Victorian flooring tiles, the Olde English geometric tile collection is for you. All our designs are based on traditional Victorian and Edwardian patterns - so to follow the example of our nineteenth century forebears you could choose, for example, a simple red, black and / or cream tile design – the Ennerdale and Barton patterns are popular choices for this approach. Alternatively you could go for something more complex and colourful, or even design a pattern of your own – the choice is yours!
If you would like some design advice then please do get in touch.
]]>We are very excited to introduce you to the new Original Features website! It has been many months in the making, but right from the start we have been very clear about what we wanted to achieve.
Firstly, we wanted to provide a showcase for our fabulous range of Victorian-style geometric tiles – to show you not just the wide range of shapes, sizes and colours available but also how you can you put them together in a multitude of combinations to create the design of your dreams.
And secondly we wanted to create a website that is informative, fun and easy to use. We know that buying a new floor or pathway for your home is a big investment so it’s really important to us that all the information you need to make the right choice is easy to find and that shopping with us is simple and straightforward.
We hope we’ve succeeded in achieving these objectives and that you enjoy using the new Original Features website as much as we have enjoyed making it. Please do tell us what you think: what works, what doesn’t and any suggestions you may have that could help us improve our service. We’d love to hear from you!
And finally … we have started by illustrating our most popular designs and borders in simple, smart, black and white. However, over the coming months, as we continue to develop the site, we’ll be adding many more designs and colour combinations – so please do come back often to see what’s new.
In the meantime, take a look at our Inspirations page to see some of our past projects and find inspiration for your own. And please do contact us if you would like help with your order or some design advice for your project.
Wayne Marden, General Manager and Alex Kempner, Marketing Manager
]]>