Saltillo (Mexican) tile is handmade, thick, heavy, and irregular in color and texture. It's a lot of work because it needs to be sealed (3 coats) and completely laid out in advance (unless you don't mind totally random patterns). About half of our tiles had light stripes down the center. The other half were solid color. We arranged our tiles in a checkerboard pattern, with all the stripes going the same way.

Grout lines can be way out of whack, since the tiles vary in size. The 4 tiles in this photo are properly lined up on the outside--with slight compensation for the larger tiles. This was the best we could do on the grout lines. (We used camel-colored grout and 7/16" grout lines.)

Our tile project was for an indoor/outdoor room that will be combination porch and dining room, to fit our very casual lifestlye.

Critters rule and humans drool at our house. We feed raccoons on the front stoop and this room has a cat door in the front, plus a back door to the new porch, which is also used to feed animals. When our tile was delivered, we had a wonderful surprise of 3 boxes containing animal footprints. We laid them out, carefully, so now we have critter prints coming in the front, coming through the cat door, and coming in the door from the porch.

Several of the tiles had lines that look like either snail or snake tracks. We put all of those on the front entry and tell everyone they're slug tracks--which might be true and it's definitely appropriate with all the banana slugs we have here in Oregon. (They aren't as pronounced as this photo shows--I increased the contrast to make them show up more.)