There are so many beautiful options on the market for tile today that you could literally spend weeks trying to decide what to use. Unfortunately some of the options will seriously date your house so you have to think long-term when choosing the hard surfaces for a home. I tend to stay pretty classic but that doesn’t mean you have to be boring.
For instance the tile used for this master bath is a very sophisticated (some might even say sexy) product called textile that I found at Jenkins Brick.
It looks like the walls are covered with linen and comes in a nice range of colors. We used the 12 x 24 size with a staggered joint installation.
We wanted a very clean contemporary look so we kept the joints as small as possible and matched the grout to the “linen” lines as closely as we could (which also means less grout to clean). The tub by Victoria and Albert is a freestanding white work of art. It hasn’t been installed yet and I can’t wait to see it.
There are some tricks of the trade you can use to achieve a great custom look while using very reasonably priced in- stock tiles. For the childrens’ shower we used Antares Platinum (at an average cost of $3.60 sf) in various sizes and directions to accomplish a much more expensive look. The bottom 3/4 of the wall is done in 20″ x 20″ squares run straight. On top of this is a border of 4″ x 4″ tiles that mirror tiles on the floor. The top section is finished with 13″ x 13″ tiles run on the diagonal. The feel is that of tumbled marble without the price tag.
Short on space? Have your tile mason make a raised ledge out of your marble or granite. It is just big enough to hold a lovely silver shaving kit or a bar of soap and frees up the real counter. You have to carefully select your faucets though to make sure you have enough room to raise and lower the drain stopper. We didn’t think about adding the ledge until after the fact so we had to swap out the fixtures.
Tomorrow is your last chance to sign up for the give away. Go here and scroll down to “Give Away!” to find the rules on how to be entered in the drawing. If you are already registered but would like to better your chances get a friend to subscribe to the this blog; shoot me an email (cindybarg@knology.net) telling me that they are your contact and your name goes in TWO MORE TIMES!
If you want to say, “That was fun!” at the end of your project contact me at www.cindybarganier.com.
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