I went through all of this. Mongoct and Bill V. are very helpful. Joist. you may or may not have the ridgidity to tile with stone. It requires a stiffer floor system than ceramic. Check the JohnBridge web site and look at their "deflectolator" to determine, roughly, your capacity. Subfloor. If you use cement board it has to be thinset inplace as well as screwed down. The thin set is not to glue in place but to fill voids that may flex and cause cracking of the tile system down the road. If you use plywood as the underlayment it needs to be screwed down on center every 6" not glued down. Ditra is a decoupleing membrain that goes down after your self leveling compound is installed. Check out my post on floor joist on the remodeling forum and here. There is a link to the remodeling forum that is very detailed and time consuming to read and interpret. I provide a link below. Check out Bill V's. post on frequently asked questions. bathroom tile FAQ's-bathrooms Check out Staceyneil's post on " Self-leveling compound & radiant heat: what I learned..." Mongoct has very detailed information throughout different posts. Here is a link that might be useful: Progress on floor prep for slate tile

All depends on how your floor system is constructed...joist size, span and how spaced. Also, Ditra can only be used for stone installations over wood when the floor system is double layer construction. You're going to have more than 3/8" when you're done with any tile installation. You have the thickness of the tile, the 1/8" thickness of the Ditra and any thickness the thin set motar layers will add to the formula. You will probably come in at about 5/8". Get what you want...if it means ordering a different wood product from a different source, then maybe that is what you may want to do. Lots of engineered flooring out there. I don't do enough of the stuff to give you brand suggestions, however Mirage, Mercier, Andersen are just a few to look for. Look at what the big box stores have and then find independent flooring retailers and see what they have. Lots of stuff is made overseas (China), so be aware and informed as to what you may be buying. Some folks are happy with engineered and some are not. Although color matching is pretty good these days, Lowes should not have shipped you product from different lots. Have you been to the Schluter site? Here is a link that might be useful: Schluter Ditra

I have had a lot of tile floors and a lot of wood floors in my house and at our weekend lake place. Weekend place has the greatroom type thing with wood floor throughout the main level including the kitchen. House at home has tile throughout the lower level and wood throughout the main level except foyer, bathroom and now the kitchen - which previously had wood. I like both but the thing I really prefer about tile over wood is the durability. The tile floor in my lower level (which is where we come in from the garage) is 36 years old and it looks like new - and requires no maintenance except washing it. It's impervious to water and slops and that's what I wanted in my kitchen. Wood floors are lovely when they're new but they do wear and they do need refinishing if you want them to continue to look good. They are not impervious to cat claws - I know from experience. Water is not the greatest thing for wood floors so I always use it sparingly when cleaning them. I don't want that kind of surface for a floor that gets very dirty - I want one I can scrub with as much water as I want. So I've had tile in my kitchen now for four years and could not be happier with it. Fortunately I don't experience the pain and agony some people seem to have standing on tile. I find it to be no different than wood in terms of comfort. It is colder but I wear something on my feet so that's not a big factor for me. My adjacent wood floors are completely even with my tile. Good luck coming to a consensus with DH. Both kinds of floors are nice but have their pros/cons.

Well, we're back from tile shopping and I think we may have found our tile for both the backsplash and the floor. The combination is remarkably similar to what I originally posted in my Kitchen Forum post on the same subject (I posted here b/c I wanted to here from the "decorating people") See the link below and the "Tue, Oct 23, 07 at 13:12" post for the floor.... The floor tile is a darker blue-gray with a few splashes of orange that complement my door color perfectly...the orange in the tile "pops" but since there isn't a lot of it it's more of an accent than an overwhelmingly orangey color. The backsplash is a creamier color with some very light orange highlights (I don't know how else to describe it!) We haven't, though, picked out any detailing for it yet...I don't know what I want...well I do, but I'm afraid it will blow the labor cost out of the water! I like the black galaxy granite dots and I think I'd really like to put those in the backsplash, but I was told that would significantly raise the labor cost...all the extra cuts and more careful laying of tile, I guess... If you look at the same post I mentioned before, you'll see the dots. But, rather than 6x6 tiles I would probably do 4x4 with dots every 3 or 4 tiles. We will have about 20 linear feet of backsplash + the cooktop to vent area to tile, so it's not a small area. Any thoughts or ideas about the backsplash? They didn't have any decent size samples of the 2 tiles so they're ordering samples for us on Monday and they should be in by the end of the week. When I get them, I will take a pic with our door and the Back Galaxy and post it here for more opinions, comments, thoughts.... Nothing is set in stone yet ;-) ++++++++++ Speaking of Black Galaxy granite, if we stick to our choices it looks like the Black Galaxy will look better than the Diamond Black (our first choice). The Diamond has silver speckles while the Galaxy has coppery speckles. ++++++++++ Amysrq: Our "bling" is our cabinetry so I want the backsplash to "gently complement everything else". That doesn't mean I want it to fade into the background and not be noticed at all, but I don't intend for it to be "center stage". Yes, I've checked out the FKB and the Finished Backsplashes Slideshow, but nothing jumped out at me....some I just didn't like..like mosaics. I don't like the look of all those 1x1 tiles--they look too busy and, in many cases, have too much color. Our budget is mid-range especially since our cabinets are costing more than we had planned...cherry wood + a glaze + some custom cabs + glass (2 cabinets w/glass doors + shelves)...definitely our "bling"! Here is a link that might be useful: Opinions Needed (please!) Cabinet + Backsplash + Floor Tile