Wednesday, June 8, 2011

New Tile Choices

So I think I'm beginning to acclimate to the heat here. I did skip the make up yesterday while I was out running around and felt much better at the end of the day. And I even wore layers, albeit light layers. But still, LAYERS! Oh, and I took a straightening iron to my hair and it didn't seem to frizz out quite so bad.

You want to know the best thing about the heat? In the late afternoon, just as the sun begins to dip behind the trees. There are lots of long grasses and hay fields around here and the smell they give off as they exhale after holding their breath through the heat of the day is just amazing. Oh! And last night I saw my very first firefly!

But enogh about that. Yesterday was tile and carpet day.

I expected it to be a long, grueling day. But it actually went very quickly. Scoob and I had met with the tile rep during our January trip and picked out several tiles we liked. She pulled all those out again and since I now have cabinets, granite, and decorative tiles picked out, eliminating previous selections was super easy. Honestly, picking grout colors was the most difficult. Who knew there were so many choices when it comes to grout?

Anyhow, here are the latest combinations. Unless these end up being way over our allowance (and they shouldn't be), these should be final.

Materials for the master bathroom.


I actually like this floor tile better than the one we picked out on our last trip. This one is creamier and complements the browns and creams in the accent tiles where the other one was more white and really only went with the grays. The floor tiles will be 16"x16" and installed on the diagonal, making the room seem larger and we'll use the complementing 8"x12" wall tiles for the shower and bath. The tile rep made a sketch of the shower for the installation crew:


Sketch for installation of master shower tile.


I think I mentioned before that we decided to pull the tub and shower out of the second downstairs bathroom and make it more like a powder room since we're going to use that downstairs bedroom as an office. I decided on a darker tile here to give it a richer feel and if we decide to go with a really saturated color on the walls, a lighter floor would have just looked off.


Materials for the downstairs bathroom/powder room.


Then there's the upstairs bathroom and the laundry room. Since they'll both have white thermafoil cabinets and the granite remnants are coming from exactly the same lots, I decided to keep it simple and use the same floor tile in both areas. (The white sheet of paper is supposed to represent the cabinets.) What's not pictured here is an accent tile. To save money I decided to put the floor tiles on the wall in the shower as well and add a small metal sunburst accent tile. Here's a relatively close example, just imagine this as 2"x2" instead of 4"x4" and take the face off the sunburst.


Materials for the upstairs bathroom.


Here are a couple of sketches for installation options in the upstairs shower. Right now I'm favoring option 1. I showed these to the builder to get his input since his specialty is tile. He thinks the diagonally set tiles should be 6"x6" instead of 12"x12" and he is going to contact the supplier and see if they're available.


Option 1 for the upstairs bathroom shower tile.


Option 2 for the upstairs bathroom shower tile.


You may have noticed that there's no kitchen tile. Well, the build price for the house included hardwood in the kitchen with a $2.50/sqft allowance for the materials. Tile also has a $2.50/sqft allowance. Scoob and I mistakenly thought we could swap these out in the kitchen as long as we stayed within our allowance. Turns out there's and addition $3/sqft cost for tile on the labor and materials (sub-flooring, grout, etc.) side. So I had a minor panic moment when I realized that the floor stain would totally clash with the cabinet color in the kitchen, but I think we've got that all worked out now.

Today was supposed to be landscaping, but apparently the landscaper that was working on a bid for our lot went out of business. We received a quote from a new landscaper today and I should be meeting with them tomorrow.

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