This is the final installment of my 3 part series of remodeling your kitchen in the Tuscan style

Tuscan style flooring is an imaginative construct.  Walk into a kitchen today in Pisa, Florence, or Siena, and you're likely to find practical ceramic tile, laminate, or resilient flooring.  In other words, Italian cooks love having easy-to-clean, easy-to-stand-on flooring just as much as anyone else.

So what you're drawing on is the feeling of Tuscany itself--its burnt siena colors, its charming Old World wear and tear, its feeling of permanence.

Achieve this with terra cotta tile, travertine or tumbled stone, or, in a pinch, with distressed plank wood flooring.

Tuscan paint colors seem to have fallen out of fashion lately among major U.S. paint makers.  A few years ago, they were everywhere.  Valspar, once known for its Tuscan Signature Accents, no longer promotes the product, and you can't even find the colors on the Valspar site anymore.

That doesn't mean that Tuscan paint colors have gone away, though.  I've completely rewritten a previous article about the colors of Tuscany, this time keying the colors to those found on the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge over the Arno in Florence.  These colors are very representative of Tuscany, or at least the Tuscany of popular imagination.

Image:  morguefile

In writing this article, I discovered--though I shouldn't be surprised--that Tuscan kitchen style is a fiction.  Invade any real, working kitchen today in Siena or Florence and you might find one that looks much like your own--modern cabinets; man-made or granite counters; modern appliances; laminate or tile flooring.

So where does this Tuscan kitchen style come from, if not from a kitchen?  It is inspired by Tuscany as a whole--by its architecture, stonework, metalwork; by its distinctive colors; by its air of hearty simplicity.

For a start, the Tuscan-style kitchen will use generous amounts of stone (mass the stone around a stove as a surround or create an accent wall); old-looking metal (an iron sconce, for example, rather than stainless steel); arches; wood plank floor or terrazzo tiles; and those unique Tuscan paint colors.

Few of us have the luxury to create a true themed, styled kitchen--Tuscan, Craftsman, Cottage, Mission, etc.  For most of us, it's enough work and expense just to get the thing up and running in a basic fashion.

That's why dedicated kitchen styles can be like pricey icing on top of the cake.

First off, the style has to be in line with the rest of the house.  It makes little sense to construct an elaborate Mission-style kitchen in a blah cookie-cutter house.  The imbalance affects not just aesthetics but may deter future buyers.

Secondly, you have to decide how far you want to go.  Sometimes you see faithful period-piece kitchens, where even the ice-boxes are rebuilt Thirties-era Kelvinators or made in this style, and the flooring is vintage Congoleum.  But mostly, kitchens styles are applied judiciously:  a little style can go a long ways.

Here I cover 6 kitchen styles:  Craftsman, Country, Shaker, Modern, European, and Tuscan.

Read:  Kitchen Styles