Homeowner takes a shine to her new tile flooring

When Barbara Klinkel made the decision to buy a home in July 2013, she decided that she did not want a natural wood floor.

Instead, she went with one of the hottest trends in flooring porcelain tiles that have a wood look.

I was out looking at products and fell in love with the look of it, Klinkel said during a recent interview in her elegantly decorated home situated on a cul-de-sac in the Black Hills. I picked the flooring first and then built from there.

Porcelain tiles that have a wood look have become a popular product, according to Jodie Frye of Rapid City-based Roger Fryes Paint and Supply, who worked with Klinkel on her interior dcor.

Though the tiles look like wood, they are made of porcelain, and according to Frye, require less maintenance and are more durable than wood.

Klinkel can attest to the floors durability. Shortly after she moved into her new home, she had an incident that could have resulted in water damage to a standard wood floor.

We hooked up the refrigerator and water dripped from behind for two days before it began to come out the front, Klinkel said. Had this been a wood floor, we would have had a lot more damage.

According to Randall Bren, flooring sales manager of Rapid City-based Black Hills Interiors, porcelain flooring is hard-wearing for many reasons.

Correctly installed, its very durable, highly scratch resistance and can take a lot of traffic, Bren said. You think about a soft surface like wood versus a porcelain surface, this is going to outperform for a long time. The wood can dent and scratch and water will affect it much easier than a porcelain product.

When we start talking about porcelain products, were talking about a rating of a product that allows it to be used as a floor product so its fired longer to flooring specifications, said Bren, adding that a porcelain floor, in general, is considered to be a 50-year life product.

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Homeowner takes a shine to her new tile flooring