Step 1: Obtain floor tiles.

Ever since moving to the Southwest ten years ago (wow, I've been here for ten years!), I have been completely in love with the aesthetic of Southwestern adobe homes.  I love the exposed wood, the combination of bright and earthy colors, the rounded edges, the patterns... all of it.  One of my favorite aspects of this kind of home design is definitely all of the tile.  Tile floors, tile walls, tile backsplashes- I love it all!

When we realized that a good portion of our new house was not going to have exposed wood floors like the front rooms do, my mind immediately jumped to our tiling options.  Without ever having to think it over at all, I knew that I wanted Saltillo tile floors.  We did our research and talked to a few people about our options, and we decided on a plan.

Our plan looks a little bit like this:

(I took this photo of a floor at the El Cordova Hotel on Coronado Island, CA.)

This weekend Josh and I went to a tile store in Old Town Albuquerque and purchased 300 square feet of Saltillo tile (that's all the truck would hold- we'll go back for more as we need it), and twenty accent tiles.

We will alternate the accents between the printed tile and the blue tiles, but otherwise we hope to have our floors look like the pattern pictured above.  We'll probably do something a little different for the den and the office, but these tiles are for the kitchen, laundry room, and bathrooms.  One step at a time here, people.  I'm pretty sure it's going to be amazing.

We're going to do all of the tiling ourselves.  All 900 square feet of it!  It'll probably take a while.  I don't know when I'll be able to post photos of the final result, but I was too excited not to say something about it now.  I am in love with these tiles and cannot wait to see how our floors turn out.  As soon as Josh finishes working on the pipes and vents for our new laundry room and patches up the floor, we'll be able to start laying the tile.  And once the tile is down, we can actually move in!