Cafeteria or Kitchen?

So yeah, VCT (vinyl composite tile) is familiar to many of us as the flooring of choice for schools, hospitals and government buildings. A little history...(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_composition_tile).

Modern VCT offers a wide range of colors and the designs are almost endless- do a google image search for "VCT flooring" and see for yourself (oooo, pretty!).

I had installed a plywood floor in my living room last year (inspired by this lovely floor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_composition_tile) so traditional wood or ceramic tile in the adjoining kitchen was not something I was interested in. Because the kitchen floor is well used and I have dogs, the durability, cost and ease of cleaning ranks high on my list of wants for this particular floor. I was fortunate enough to find VCT at my local Restore and I chose 3 colors- Delft Blue, Cool Grey and Willow. Each box covers 45 square feet and at the Restore, they were only $15/box- I needed 3 boxes each of the blue and grey and only a handful of the Willow tiles as accent so I ended up spending about $100 on tile. I didn't find the adhesive I needed at the Restore so I bought that from the local home improvement center.

I had an idea in mind of how I wanted the floor to look but before gluing, I dry laid the tile to see how it would look. My rules were no set pattern, no more than 4 tiles of any one color together, flip each same-colored tile to create a subtle change in coloring and throw in a green tile every now and again to add interest. This is how the dry run looked:

To ensure that the tile runs correctly throughout the room, it needs to be laid prior to placing the new island but I want to make the island first so I can see how it will work in the space. On to another project!