Hi catbox/emerald18 - your kitchen is absolutely stunning - I love it - mostly because your style is the same as mine - only the tiles I've chosen are Henley Cool from Topps Tiles (sage green/blue). I've also had a few moments of indecision but I've had a picture and sample of the tiles pinned up for months and I still love them. I'd chosen matt slab style kitchen door fronts but I might be convinced by your photo to change to Shaker. I am also going for the wood worktop but can't decide whether to have a Belfast sink or not. What sink did you choose? I also can't decide on a splashback, but like white painted brick + something more cleanable by the sink and hob. Once again, I love love love your kitchen - I'm pinning the photo of it up with my tiles picture in case I get future wobbles about my dream kitchen

What I have always thought is, if you try to "match" an existing floor it looks like you tried and missed. When you go with something completely different, the result is yes, I wanted something different, and here it is. Especially if you lay it in a different direction. Does that make sense?

Hi, I would incline to tiling the whole space in one material. Now, with that you have lots of options in terms of material choices. If you have underfloor heating I would recommend to go for porcelain tiles - they come in wide range of colours, patterns, stone and wood imitations. Marble and wood imitating tiles are very popular and timeless such as calacatta white marble, creme marfil marble, granite, slate. Wood porcelain tiles range from blonde tones, light, dark browns to almost black, zebrano. Porcelain tiles technology has evolved so much over the last decade that an untrained eye can not distinguish the porcelain from the real thing. And if you have children it's so much more practical as well. Easy to clean and maintain. However, if you don't have the option of underfloor heating I would recommend wooden flooring. Again throughout. I wouldn't break the flow with different flooring types. If you have your living room in that open plan as well, I wouldn't worry too much about changing the flooring type just because of it. You can always use large rugs to define the area and function of that space, and make it more cosy. I just completed a project with porcelain tiles throughout. You can have a look at my profile. More images are on my website. I'm happy to help so please get in touch if you need more specific info. I offer lots of free information on my blog and via social media. I'm more than happy to point you in the right direction. Hope this helps. Karolina

We are in the process of filling our gaps with pine slithers (they cam in different widths) You can buy them online. You do suffer from bald/ red knees when you hammer them in and then need to chisel them down so they are flush with the rest of the floor but it really does help. What you can also order with the pine slithers is pine saw dust with resin - you mix the two up and can fill the really narrow gaps which the slithers don't fit into. If you don't mind spending the time doing this I would recommend it yourself (especially if you're worried about costs), depending how big the surface is, and then have someone in to do the sanding. The varnishing you can also do you yourself with a normal paint roller. We also recently had a quote for sanding and varnishing and I think it came to £500 for mid size living room and 3 m length hall.