Porcelain Tile That Handles a Missouri Year

Porcelain is pressed from finer clay and fired hotter than standard ceramic, which leaves it dense enough to absorb almost no water - under half a percent by weight. That number is why we keep specifying it for basements, entries and anywhere a mop lands twice a week. It is harder underfoot than most stone, rated for commercial traffic, and it will not fade where the afternoon sun hits it. For a house that takes both August humidity and January road salt, it is hard to beat.

The looks have caught up with the durability. Wood-look planks, marble-look slabs, concrete-look squares and textured outdoor-rated tile all come in porcelain now, and the printing on the good lines is convincing at standing height. If a room stays dry and you want the genuine article underfoot, solid hardwood is still the better floor and we install plenty of it. For basements, laundry rooms and mudrooms, porcelain wins on the first wet spring.

Large-format and plank-shaped porcelain punishes an uneven subfloor. A dip of an eighth of an inch under a 24-inch tile turns into a raised edge you can feel with a bare foot. So we laser the floor first, patch and grind until it is flat, then set with leveling clips and back-butter every piece for full mortar contact. Coverage matters more with porcelain than with anything else, because a hollow spot under a dense tile is a crack waiting on a dropped skillet.

Cutting is the other half of it. Porcelain will dull an ordinary blade in one afternoon, so we run rim-segmented diamond blades and a grinder with a porcelain wheel for outlets, vents and door casings. It is slower and it costs us blades, and it is the reason the cuts look tight instead of chipped. If the price is the sticking point, we can spread it out with monthly payments through Hearth.