If you are a regular reader of our blog you will know that we like mosaics. We have used tiles found in various skips and created a floor in our roundhouse, walls in our bathroom and a surround for our stove among other things.
If you would like to know more about making mosaics visit the MOSAIC section of the blog where you can get inspiration and tips for your own projects.
In the last couple of weeks we have been busy renovating a room in our shed that will finally become a workshop, sewing room and art studio all rolled into one.
We wanted the floor to be hardwearing, easy to clean and reasonably light in colour. After some deliberation we decided to use many of the left over tiles from previous mosaic projects. We have been lucky to find a lot of whole discarded tiles and have also been given some from friends, so we thought it would be a good idea to use them for this project.We started by counting up the various designs and realised that we had over one hundred and fifty light green ones.
One hundred a forty four of them went into a big square, covering a large area of the floor. We then built out from this centre design and added tiles around in a somewhat symmetrical design. As you can see we placed the large square at an angle to make the space feel more energetic.
We had some white tiles the same size as the light green ones and used them in a smaller square mirroring the large one.
After that we added tiles in a random fashion but kept them all going in the same direction to create a bit of uniformity.
The different size tiles created some areas that we had to fill in with broken tiles and tiny mosaic squares to fill the whole floor.
The resulting floor might not be called beautiful in a conventional way, but we think it has beauty in its own right.
We have created a strong, durable and practical floor from tiles solely destined for landfill. It only took a little longer to put down than a typical tiled floor would do. It was very easy to do and took next to no design skills.
Imagine how many floors could be created from tiles in skips at the back of tile shops all around the world! Just remember to avoid shiny wall tiles as they might be slippery. Floor tiles are the best option for this project. We have used wall tiles on floors on occasion, but always broken into small pieces in a mosaic, to avoid any risk of slipping on the finished floor.
Our floor is beautiful because the energy that went into creating the tiles in the first place was not forfeited. The tiles found a home and were not thrown away.
We have moved onto working on the walls now and insulating the ceiling. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the finished floor. It is all grouted now but we have only cleaned it up enough to continue with the rest of the work.
So what do you think? Is it a beautiful floor?
thegreenerdream 
It has a charm all of its own, and all the better for its mode of creation.
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