When renovating a floor with tile in a bathroom, kitchen, or other area of your home, making seamless transitions between rooms and thresholds can create a very clean look that you aren’t going to trip over. But the problem is floor height or wall thickness!  And that doesn’t include the mess, and cost of demolition for your old floor.

Here’s an example of what I mean. On a current project, we had an issue with a dishwasher.  This European dishwasher was previously installed under a kitchen counter that was lower than the usual 36″ height.  There are few dishwasher products that would meet our needs, so we needed a floor product that wouldn’t raise the floor height more than a 1/4 inch.

The existing flooring was cork, which is 1/8 inch thick and easily removed.  So, with tile mastic (glue) and tile, we could only be 1/4 inch thick. You can imagine the challenge!  Well, the Italians have done it!  There is a new tile product on the market called Kerlite Plus.  This tile is only 3.5 mm thick, which is about an 1/8″!  It has a fiberglass backing which adds to it’s strength. This stuff is actually a bit flexible unlike thicker tile, but it can withstand a steel ball dropping 80cm vs. an unreinforced tile, which can only take a 5cm drop! Kerlite Plus can be applied directly over existing tiles.  This will eliminate the cost of demolition, speed things up, and prevent a lot of dust and mess.

We’re installing this new tile today in our client’s kitchen, in place of the cork. Everyone is very excited to see the result! It sure looks promising, though!

Here is a video describing Kerlite Plus,  and a website with more info.