2025, Business, Fantasy, Gatherings, Nature, Uncategorized

Warm Floors

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At the sibling gathering (while I was visiting Nonny in St. Louis earlier this month), someone must have mentioned something about heated floors.  I made a note on my post-it note app, assuming (ha ha ha ha) that the words “heated floor” would trigger my memory for what I thought might be a blog piece.  Again, ha ha ha ha.

About 25 years ago, I had a site inspection scheduled to San Francisco and Napa.  The morning of the trip, the client called to cancel due to his wife’s illness but he told me to go ahead, see what I needed to see and take good notes and pictures.  No problem on my part.

The plan for the group was to do a day of wineries and a lovely lunch.  However the group was too big to be at any one winery at once (most of the Napa wineries are actually pretty small) so we needed to split up the group.  Group A and Group B went to different wineries in the morning, had lunch together at a place that could hold them all and then the groups would flip and do the wineries for the afternoon.  Easy peasy, right? 

In one long day, I visited 11 wineries to find the four that would work well for the group.  Each owner met me, toured me around and… offered me samples.  There didn’t feel like a gracious way to turn down the wine.  Even though I never finished an entire glass, by the end of the day, I was a bit tipsy.  Add to that the weather was chillier than had been forecasted and my coat was not up to the job.  By the time we got to the hotel, Meadowood Resort, all I wanted was to have a bit of room service and collapse in a warm bed.  

With all that liquid refreshment, I ended up having to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night.  It was chilly as I walked across the bedroom and then…. oh my stars… the bathroom floor was warm.  The first and last time I’ve personally ever come across heated floor tiles.  And of all the times I could truly appreciate them, there they were!  When I finally left and headed back to bed, I slept like a baby.

If this wasn’t what I was thinking about when somebody at the sibling gathering mentioned heated floors, then I’m completely in the dark.

If money weren’t an issue, what home improvement would you like to make?

35 thoughts on “Warm Floors”

  1. It occurs to me that as much as I appreciated those heated floor tiles, last year when we had to re-do the bathroom, neither YA nor I even thought about adding them. Lost opportunities!

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  3. I’ve done several bathrooms with under-tile heat. The best one included from floor to ceiling glow-in-the-dark grout lines. It looked a little like the holodeck on Startrek: Next Generation.

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  4. When we put ceramic tile in the kitchen a number of years ago, it was suggested we make the floor heated. We didn’t, but we don’t find the tile cold. I would have a gas line extended into the kitchen so we could have a gas range and insulate the garage.

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  5. If money wasn’t an issue, I would sell this vertical condo and perhaps build a one-level, off-grid home with solar panels, a heat pump for heating/cooling, and yes, warm floors. I think you do feel warmer if you are warm from the floor up. When I got new flooring in October, I briefly considered installing in-floor heat but it would have been too expensive for what this little place is worth. I have to think of practicality for resale purposes. I would build it in a place near Northfield on a wooded lot with a long driveway. I’d have my own well.

    I feel so accomplished today. I have my tax return organizer 99 percent ready to take in to my CPA – just waiting for a few more documents. And I finished my nursing CEUs. I decided to keep my license for at least a couple more years.

    I’m going to finish reading Louise Penny’s most recent Gamache mystery/drama today. I used to enjoy her Gamache series more than I do now. She has started to exaggerate, in my humble opinion, some of the quirky characteristics of the Three Pines villagers. It’s kind of making me roll my eyes just a little. If anyone wants my hardcover copy of The Grey Wolf, I will give it to you.

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    1. Krist, it is only January and your taxes are ready? I don’t even have my 1099s and W2s yet. Some are ready online, but I am still unmotivated to download them. Impressive.

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      2. My tax preparer said to get the organizer done as soon as I can. I have a big tax bill coming this year due to the harvest of lumber and sale of our woods. The 1099s have been coming in. I’m leaving Saturday for Mazatlan and I wanted to have most of it ready before I left. I’ve been persistent about asking for my documentation asap. I even called my bank and asked why one of the 1099s wasn’t there yet. It came late this afternoon (online). There might be one more, but if I take what I have in to my preparer, she’ll be okay until I get back. I’m going to drop what I have off tomorrow.

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  6. your note VS was in response to a comment that Jacque had made about been redoing the bathroom I believe and suggested that he had heated floors because she loved them.
    My heated floor experience was that that house that I owned at the bottom of the long driveway had an owner with more money than brains and he put a bathroom in the basement with heated floors and very cool lighting that must’ve gone over the top on the budget, but I thought was cool. Well, I turned the heated floors on. Only to discover that my heating bill went up about $400 that month because not only where the floor is heated but all the sand and the ground below the floors must not have been insulated and I was heating the underside of my home as much as creating a warm spot for my feet needless to say the heated floors never got turned on again. Was a cool idea but not worth 400 a month today it would be 800.

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  7. I wish I had installed radiant heat plumbing in the third-floor concrete patio deck when I built the house.

    A recent winter storm produced an ice pond, which leaked through an interior wall into a ceiling downstairs. We ended up shoveling snow and ice in our jammies, in 12 degree weather, at 10:30 PM.

    Now I’m looking at enclosing the space with 12 panels of glass sliding doors, which is fine with Linda. She’s been campaigning to box it in for 25 years.

    So far, 4 contractors have declined the project. Outside their competency, they admit.

    I can’t wait to see the price tag.

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  8. Well, if money is not an issue, I would buy the house to the north of us, tear it down, plant an apple orchard and more garden beds, and fence the whole yard.

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      1. It may be perfectly obvious to everyone else what “zero clearence” means in this context, but I need a little help. Does it have to do with landscaping?

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  10. Being a renter, I’d first have to buy a house, but if I had one, I would add a sunroom for the cats, put up a couple of sheds (one for a writing cabin for my roomie and one for a spagyrics lab for me), and plant a vegetable/herb garden, a bee & butterfly garden, and some berry bushes. If zoning permitted, I’d start a hive and try making mead. It’d have to be a big backyard…

    –Crow Girl

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  11. IF money wasn’t an issue, I guess we’d have added more rooms to the house for the ‘master bath’ and ‘exercise room’ before we started the bathroom remodeling.
    And my shop would be twice as large. Heck 4x as large! With in floor heat.

    We put in floor heat in our entry way and it’s really nice. Kelly is very excited to get that in the bathroom. We had a small wallmounted heater in there. She used it. There still is one in the downstairs bathroom. I don’t use it very often…

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  12. Our downstairs (main floor) bathroom is the coldest room in the house. One reason is that husband, when he remodeled the bathroom forty years ago, removed the large old, tall radiator and replaced it with a shorter but longer one. This, and expanded the size of the bathroom by a third. To make matters worse, he put the radiator in upside down. Why this makes a difference, I have no idea, but apparently it does. At any rate, using that bathroom during really cold days is invigorating, shall we say. I’d love to have in-floor heating in that room.

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  13. Better Late than Never, Baboons,

    Today I returned to Water Aerobics, after a gentle return to Water Yoga Monday. I was so exhausted I took a nap when I got home.

    tim is right, we have a heated bathroom floor. With the new bathroom, it is the second heated floor. What I discovered about that is that the technology for it changed a great deal in 20 years between bathroom remodels. There are now pre-wired segments which all fit together. Those segments also heat more gently through the tiles than the old models which the contractor laid onto the floor, wire by wire.

    In the remodeling world you can go as expensive as finances will allow. When we moved here we chose the home for the beautiful, sunny yard, as well as the location in town. However, if I had unlimited funds, I would not live in this house which we have remodeled everywhere. I would have knocked it down and started over on the same lot. The neighborhood story is that the contractor (1973-1974) was a drunk who drank more as the projects went on. Ours was the last house, so he was really impaired by the time he got to this one. During various projects we have found cigaret butts and beer cans throughout–attic, walls, garage. The walls were crooked, there was aluminum wiring (very bad), poorly installed drywall, and the furnace, which is to be in the middle of the lower level, is located at one end of the house, which makes that end too warm. Such was construction in the 1970s which is said to be the low point of American construction.

    So I would knock it all down and start over. But I would keep the heated floors and add a towel warmer.

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    1. In the remodeling world, you can go as expensive as you want but you can’t go as inexpensive as would be practical for the overall value of your home.

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  14. If I had the money to spend, I’d like to add some space. A really big walk-in closet and an upstairs bathroom. But if I did that, the added square footage would mean higher energy consumption, So I’d also want to add geothermal and solar energy improvements. Maybe a windmill too. Heaated floors would sure be nice…..

    I’d like the glow-in-the-dark grout, absolutely.

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