Honed stone and
one thin brick

Flooring Correct, at 15570 Veterans Memorial Pkwy in Wentzville, Missouri, keeps a small specialist selection of stone and decorative pieces under brick and stone. Six items in all, one of them thin brick, two of them a threshold and a decorative. It is not a full floor category. Call 636-332-0654.

What is actually in this category

Six selections, and they are worth naming plainly. Tierra Halo Honed and Strada Mist Chevron Mosaic Honed are honed stone, the mosaic at accent scale rather than field scale. Checkerboard Provence Beige Field Tile Ancient is a field tile. Thin Brick Lime Black Field Tile Tumbled is the only brick in the category. Serene Ivory Curva Decorative Tile Textured is a decorative, and Fino Black Threshold Polished is a threshold trim piece, not floor field material at all.

So the honest count for a floor is three field selections plus one mosaic, with a decorative and a threshold alongside them for edges and transitions. That is a specialist corner, not a category with range. Availability moves, and much of this is ordered in rather than stocked on the floor. Call the showroom at 636-332-0654 before you drive out and we will tell you what we can put in your hands and what we can bring in.

Honed stone next to standard tile

Honed stone is quarried stone ground flat and left matte instead of buffed to a shine. Honing hides scratches, traffic patterns and acid etching far better than a polished face, and it is less slick underfoot when it is wet. A polished stone entry looks correct for about one winter. The same stone honed keeps looking like itself. It still wants sealing and a pH neutral cleaner, and an acidic spill can still etch it.

The practical difference from porcelain is porosity and repetition. Porcelain absorbs 0.5 percent of its weight in water or less and never needs sealing, but it is pressed and printed, so the pattern repeats every so many tiles. Real stone is porous, so it gets sealed before grouting, so the grout does not stain the face, then sealed again afterward. In exchange, no two pieces match and nothing repeats across the floor.

The one brick

Thin Brick Lime Black Field Tile Tumbled is real fired brick cut to a face thin enough to set over a prepared floor instead of stacked like masonry. Tumbled means the edges are worn, so no two pieces match and the color moves across the floor. Brick is also a small unit, which means many more pieces and much more grout per square foot than a 12 by 24 tile. It takes longer to set and it costs more to set. That is the honest trade for a floor that does not repeat.

Where it belongs

Entries and mudrooms are the obvious place. Salt, slush and grit come in off the driveway from November through March, and a honed stone or tumbled brick floor takes it without looking beaten up, because the surface already has texture and variation to hide behind. A high polish shows every bit of that winter.

The rest of it lands in small, deliberate spaces. The floor in front of a fireplace. A powder room. A back hall or a landing. A border or an inset dropped into a larger field of plain tile, which is what the mosaic and the decorative are for, with the threshold handling the change of material at a doorway. A chevron mosaic across a whole main floor is loud. The same mosaic in a four foot entry is the reason someone stops at the door.

Where it does not belong is a long open run of living space, and with a selection this small that would be a stretch anyway. For those rooms, tile gives you far more sizes and colors to work with, and luxury vinyl plank or hardwood are often the better answer. We will say so before you spend the money.

Brick and stone for walls, fireplace faces and backsplashes is a separate selection with its own page, and it is the larger of the two. If the floor and the wall are both in play, look at them together rather than a month apart.

How it gets set

Same order as any floor we install. Consultation, product selection, a detailed quote, scheduling, preparation, expert installation, a post-installation inspection and clean-up. Preparation carries more weight here than it does with a large format tile, because a tumbled brick or an irregular stone face is set to a wider joint, and the layout gets dry laid and centered before anything goes down in mortar. Our crews have 15 or more years of experience and most have 25 or more.

See it, then get a number

Stone and brick read differently in a four inch sample than they do across a floor, and the grout color changes them again. Bring the cabinet door or a photo of the room and we will lay what we have out on the counter with you. Estimates are free, the measure happens in your house with the doorways and transitions accounted for, and we work across St. Charles, Warren, St. Louis and Lincoln counties. Twelve month financing at 0 percent is available through Avvance if it helps the timing.