Same here. Thinking of travertine with heat. What kind of heat are you installing?

We just got our large travertine tiles down. They look fantastic. We are waiting on cabinets, a mixture of cream painted and rustic alder. Will try to take pics when all is done. We are doing much of the labor ourselves so hope "all will be done" soon!

One thing to be aware of it stone tile requires the supporting joists and subfloor to be incredibly rigid to prevent the tile or grout from eventually cracking. The minimum requirement is L/720, which I believe means for any given length of floor, L, the floor must not deflect more that L/720 inches, when subjected to a point load of a certain amount. So if your floor spans 10 feet, the center must not flex more than 0.16 inches.

If your floor structure does not meet these requirements you should either have the floor structure reinforced, or consider a travertive-look porcelain tile. For porcelain and ceramic tile I believe the requirement is L/360.

Since our floor structure only barely met the requirements for ceramic tile (it was about L/382) we installed a limestone-look porcelain tile, over an electric heating mat from Warmly-Yours, and absolutely love, love, love the floor.

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Here is a large travertine pattern that we just put in our 2nd master bathroom.

I really like the way it turned out. I can't wait until they put the grout in.

Dallgower: I LOVE your tile. I wish they had that in stock when we did our house. I am sure I would have put that in most of my house.

We used about 16" travertine in my master bath with stained cabinets. I also have it in a guest half-bath with a stained cabinet. I LOVE it. Here in Florida, the cool floors feel fine in the summer or winter. Up north, I would want it heated.

Blue Tapestry Granite counters with stained cabinets...used Walnut Travertine on the floor

Here's my 20" bathroom tile with dark stained cabs (still under construction). This isn't travertine tho. It's a porcelain lookalike. I love travertine but chose porcelain for less maintenance.

FYI and to anyone else out there contemplating travertine tiles, I do not know what all of the fuss is about. There is LESS maintenance with the tile in our shower or bathroom with travertine -Vs- porcelain tiles. It feel lucious to walk on and less groutlines to worry about or clean. I have it on my backsplas in the kitchen, too, and no problems. I don't have current photos up, but you can see what it looked like when we installed it back in 2005.

My point: seal it as soon as it's installed and when you think it needs it again. I am going to reseal the shower here soon just because I want to, not because I have to do so. I've not had one mildew stain or anything on the grout. We used sanded grout around the accent pieces and unsanded between tiles at about 1/16th between tiles.

Here is a link that might be useful: Check out the master bath and kitchen backsplash

monicakm........I love your flooring!!! What brand, style, color is it : ) Was it pricey?
I'm hoping the cabinet maker comes back with the stain for my maple like your cabinets (and susan4664's too). I think the flooring looks wonderful, it all blends very nicely to my eye.
TIA

bump........I'd like to see a few more too : )

I adore travertine! I have it in a (seldom used) entry, honed, and tumbled on my kitchen backsplash. With 3 applications of sealer on the backplash and a Mr Clean Eraser (love those things!) NOTHING has stained the kitchen backsplash. My (seldom used) entry has a stain on it right now from a worker who kicked up the protective paper and tracked in some unknown something on it. Yes, it was sealed. I haven't tried a poltice yet. All the chemicals and products that get used in a bathroom (makeups, lotions & oils, medical supplies, hair color, etc)...I don't want to have to worry about staining it and keeping it sealed so I chose a porcelain lookalike.
saskatchewan_girl, thank you! In the store, the manufacture's name is Marazzi. Style is Eclipse (or Eclypse) and the color is Moonlight. It's the lightest of 4 shades. The one next to it was very pretty too! However, you won't find it on the Marazzi website. I discovered that a company called Ragno actually owns Marazzi and this tile (for whatever reason) is under the Ragno name. But like I said, in the store, it has a Marazzi sticker on it. The decorators where I bought mine said they use this all the time for it's realistic travertine look and it matches really well when mixing it with real travertine (as I did).
I don't know the retail price but I think it's an inexpensive tile. We paid $2 sq ft. My husband works for the design shop where we purchased it so we get a good discount. I wish I could help with the name of the cabinet stain. We had the vanity custom built. The painter would bring me samples. I described it as a "deep chocolate" brown. Everything was too light till I finally asked "what part of 'deep chocolate' don't you understand? (lol) The next sample was, as they say, spot on!
Monica

Just learned to post pics so going crazy. Don't know if you are still working on this but here are pics of our tile and of our painted and stained cabinets with travertine.

I love travertine and ALL the pictures here are lovely but vwhippiechick, the foreground of your last picture is the most beautiful and adorable of them all. So cute I want to squeeze that handsome head and lie down on that gorgeous gorgeous fur.

Okay, so I don't mean to hijack this thread as I have no travertine or dark cabs, but just had to share my Bella with wvhippiechick. :)

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Mindstorm We picked the travertine to go with the fur. Because the fur is great except when you have to clean it from the sofa, the tables, the rugs etc, etc, etc. Clay is the best and most lovable dog though.
Creekylis
Bella is well Beautiful! Sure looks comfy on those nice cushions. I would enjoy a nap with her there myself.
Okay done with the dog talk. Back to Travertine.

That's an interesting point about the travertine hiding the dog fur... Here I was thinking of getting wood. Hmmmm.......

We used the ivory Versailles pattern travertine in our home also.

Kitchen:

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Laundry:

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It's also in our breakfast area, sunroom, pantry, powder room and main level bathrooms. For the showers: in the MBR, we used the largest piece from the pattern on the walls (rectangle) and since the guest shower is smaller, we used the smaller rectangle on the walls.

I did not want any carpet, so our lower level is a porcelain travertine, 20" square.

{{!gwi}}

Also, search the FKB, linked below, for kitchens with painted cabinetry.

KWL has several also:

http://www.atticmag.com/lookswelove/kitchenswelove.html

Here is a link that might be useful: FKB

vwhippiechick, how does the travertine hold up with the dog. we have four and are debating on filled versus unfilled travertine. we love the look of travertine but wonder how it holds up with pets.

Sabrina, Our dog is not the neatest animal on the planet, he digs in the dirt, rolls in the grass, loves the mud. So far, and we haven't had the tile down very long, it is going really well. It shows so much less dirt than the white vinyl we had before. We sealed it very well just after we got it down. It has had a lot of foot traffic too with the cabinet installers, our friend the plumber, our appliance guy and the linebackers that moved the appliances. They were all pretty nonchalant about tracking in stuff (except the cabinet guys) and it is still looking good. I can only hope it continues. Don't know if you can tell from the pics but ours has filled areas.