Monday, April 18, 2016

Picking Tile

In addition to lights, we have picked all our tile choices for the house, too.  They are, for the most part, simple and safe choices.  and we are both happy with that.  here is a little tour of all the different tiles we considered.

Upstairs Bath: This one only had a little back and forth.  Once we had moved on from our brief hope of finding the perfect mid-modern piece to serve as a vanity


 and accepted the reality of using a stock vanity





we were pretty sold on using this simple porcelain tile from Home Depot. Here is the look with the final light fixtures for upstairs:


The floor tile is the same tile we will use by the back door in the den, so that we won't walk straight in from the garage and step on to carpet.  We are also repeating the white subway tile we are using as a kitchen back splash for the shower walls.  It will be a calm, clean and neutral look.

Downstairs Bath:

This area took a little more deciding.  I pretty much had my heart set on white marble for the shower  even though it will be a HUGE shower and marble makes it pretty pricey, i love the look and really feel that it's a decent investment for the space.  So we agreed to do a marble 3x6 tile for the shower walls - the larger back wall will be laid out in a herringbone pattern and the side wall will be in a stacked brick pattern.  Also, i (Jon said i could go crazy and he would support whatever decision i made) picked a fun accent tile pattern for the back of the wall niche. HOWEVER, after talking out the tiling plan with our contractor and tiler, we decided to move the niche to the side wall, so it could be deeper and more functional, thus negating the accent-ness of the accent tile - so we scrapped that entirely.

THE FLOOR was the more challenging area, we considered several options.  First, sticking with the same tile we used in the upstairs bath floor and the den entry floor:
 But that just looked too 'one note; for us and i really had an issue with the 'natural stone LOOK' next to actual natural stone.  i thought it might look glaringly fake and cheap when confronted with the comparison.

So we went on an extensive search to give ourselves more options, and we narrowed it down to these few:

1)
 Love the oversized hex look - but they can be quite pricey.

2)
 Love the dark tile and the contrast it gives to the lighter everything else in the room.

3)
 we really like the smooth texture of this tile and thought that the color was good contrast as well

4)
 This oblong hex was really fun and a great color but also super pricey

5)


This tile was a simple and low budget choice but we didn't really like the texture.


6)


We very much liked the color of this option, but didn't like the stripeiness of the texture - it was too contemporary for our taste. 



Ultimately we decided on..... #2 we liked the drama of the super dark tile and the modern feel, but felt it still fit with the more vintage touches we were looking at. 

BUT it was out of stock EVERYWHERE.  I went crazy for about 2 hours calling every tile place and searching online for vendors, even considering paying $200+ just for shipping to get it from places like Georgia - only to find it was out of stock there as well.  

We really couldn't wait the unknown period of time it would take for this choice to be back in stock, so we went back to searching BUT this time with a better sense of what we like.  We knew we wanted large 12x24 plank tile AND that we wanted a darker look for the floor to contrast with the other tile and fixtures. 

Here are the options we found:

1)
 2)



In the end, we went wth number #1 we like deep color and subtle texture, plus it has many many rave reviews on the Home Depot website from customers who have bought it an liked it.  In the end, this tile was about half the price of our original #2 pick (NOT including the crazy shipping charges), so the silver lining is that we saved some money there.  The tile is on it's way to the job site, probably to be installed this week!

1 comment:

  1. So exciting! Love that you're sharing your thinking process, too. You made a beautiful choice in that tile...now, what color grout?

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