I can tell you without hesitation that of all of the challenges to this point, choosing tile has been the hardest.
First, there is the budget...we asked Tom what our price range is and he said $3 a square foot. If you have priced tile anywhere, I mean tile that you would actually use, you know that this sort of tile does not exist.
I accidentally found Ann Sacks and realized really quickly that some tile can cost more than appliances. So, with the budget in mind and the internet at my fingertips, away I went searching page after page of tile...glass tile, stone tile, ceramic tile, mosaic tile... Started to feel a bit like Bubba, except for me it is tile instead of shrimp - for those of you who missed out on my Alabama humor, Bubba was in Forrest Gump.
But for real, after a while of looking only at tile, I had to take breaks because I felt I was gonna go a bit insane... I kept telling myself that it cannot be normal to have visions of tile shadowing every aspect of my waking being...even my dreams were consumed with page after page of tile. How can I best view the most tiles at one time - I really enjoy the sites that allow you to see all products, even though there are like 3000 but why do they do that? I think the waiting for the images to load is more frustrating than 20 per page. Now, 100 per page performs pretty well. If you have searched tirelessly for that perfect something on the internet, you understand.
And, for those of you who would be completely perplexed that we could choose tile online and think that there is no way that you could select tile from internet retailers after only seeing pictures, then maybe you should not read any further. Just about every tile was selected site unseen with trust based on previous internet shopping adventures and knowing that the pictures are usually quite accurate and reviews really help to confirm any lingering doubts.
After confirming our choices with Tom so that he could order them, we now just wait and hope that they look like the pictures...
But, I digress. Since we do not have large areas that require tile, the task of choosing shouldn't be so tough, right? Wrong...with all of the different price ranges and types of tile all just a click away, we realized that we had to have some sort of a game plan. The best one I could come up with was to shop one room at a time. With this approach, we are pretty excited about our selections...and hope that Tom was joking about the $3 per square foot.
Let's begin with the upstairs bathroom. For the floor, the choice was quite easy and believe it or not, we were able to stay within the budget...actually, I think that Tom might have found these tiles for just a bit under budget at $2.99. That is a whopping 1 penny per square foot under budget for those of you keeping score!
The tile is by DalTile and is called Fabrique in Blanc Linen. This tile will be used on the floor of the upstairs bathroom as well as the laundry room downstairs and is a 12x24 field tile. As hard as it is to believe, this tile is porcelain. The only site I could find that had a pretty good description has the price at 3.99 but if memory serves me correctly, we found them for less. Anyway, you can read more about the tile here...
The wall tile was a bit more complicated since we wanted to have a little bit of fun and not be predictable - and not being predictable makes it almost impossible to stay within the budget. But at least we can rest assured that just about any tile has to be closer to the budget than the tile I was pricing out at Ann Sacks. Did you know that there is tile that costs $110 a square foot? Believe it...
Ann Sacks must love her some rich folks! Anyway, I got a little creative here knowing that we were wanting something in the gray family and hopefully glass, so we found some vitreous glass mosaic tiles in three complementary colors (storm, cloud, and beach). These will be installed in a modern linear pattern which I will draw out for the installer. This tile will also carry into the common area and be installed behind the mirror and above the vanity.
Storm Color - I sure hope that the dangling tile near the bottom right of the sheet of tile is not representative of all sheets in our order...
Cloud Color - should work nicely with the Storm...
Now I know that separately, these tiles are sort of blah. But here is sort of the vision of how we want these tiles to be installed.
Now, mixing these tiles together really makes some blah tiles pop, if I do say so myself... The design will probably be tweaked multiple times, but we ordered 40 square feet of storm (dark gray color) and 20 square feet of the other two. So, the pattern will have to work out using 2 parts storm to 1 part of cloud and beach.
As you know, we have already ordered the penny tile that we will have installed in the powder room from floor to ceiling on the wall opposite the door - not sure if the vanity will be installed before or after, but I think we have enough either way. I have discussed this tile in a previous post...
The master bathroom was the most challenging - especially to the budget. For the shower, we chose this tile which is both a glass and marble mosaic of larger and smaller pieces in a random pattern - this will installed AFF which I just recently learned means above finished floor.
Now for the shower floor, we will be using natural stone pebbles. My only hope is that this is not a fad but since it is only going to be in the shower, we took a risk and went with them because we like the way they look and I bet they will feel really cool too!
What do you think? Will these tiles go out of style in like a hot second? I have seen some folks go crazy with these tiles on Houzz - but I think limiting them to the shower area and also matching them to the floor tiles will keep these current.
Now, some folks said that these tiles were quite difficult to line up - looks to me as if the shape lends itself to easy installation. Now, I am not sure how they will get a straight edge when they lay these against the wall, but I leave such challenges to the trained professionals.
And for the master bathroom floor we actually were able to find some more tile that was in budget! These tiles are rather large (24x24) and are called Stream in the color Ice by Eleganza. These too are polished porcelain but have the feel of natural stone. I actually cannot believe how much porcelain and ceramic tile has advanced in the past couple of years - they can make tiles look and kind of feel like almost anything. You can read more about these Eleganza tiles here...
The final tile we had to choose had already been decided on for quite some time - the kitchen backsplash. We are using honed Carrara marble subway tiles. These tiles will line the stove wall and the refrigerator wall - the Carrara marble on the island will be polished. We know, we know...we have chosen the two most high maintenance countertop surfaces (Carrara and Soapstone) but we have our heart set on it, and know that if we change our mind at this point, we will kick ourselves...so no going back now. The tiles below look tumbled, but you get the idea...
We will update you at a later time on how our decision plays out. We keep hearing that we will etch the island the first time we cook and that we should go with the honed finish instead of the polished finish...we have heard all of the warnings...and we are stubbornly not changing our minds.
We figure if we have a high maintenance dog, we may as well have some high maintenance countertops as well!
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