Runaway Renos

Hand sculpted tiles by Ann Sacks.

Absolutely stunning.

Too bad they’re $477/sq.ft.

[Trendir]

My walkway needs to be redone. Period. It’s awful on both sides of my house. So we’ve decided to call 2010 ‘The Year of the Walkway’ (and vacation – because we so desperately need one!). On the side entrance of our house, we have a fence that blocks the horrors of walkway disasters but we can’t always use that (also ugly) fence to hide our shame forever. I want to make it a little more appealing…

The above picture is what my hubster has been trying to describe to me for eons and to my surprise, this thing popped up in my feed reader. Now I can say to him “you mean this?”. I’ll be waiting for his jaw to drop and his head to shake enthusiastically. Sweet.

[The Contemporist]

This house looks like it’s made from tiles. Seriously. Stone or slate tiles. But gorgeous!

Perhaps it’s because I have tiles on the brain that I am noticing things like these.

See the complete house at The Contemporist

Okay, people! Before I begin with my last two options for tiles, I would like to thank my sillyness for making my feed delete all my subscribers when I switched over to this address. It was all my fault. But I figured it out and now my feed is fixed. YAY!

And now with the tiles…I have narrowed it down to two tiles for the bathroom shower area and back splash for the sink:

Autumn Tuscan Pattern Tumbled Mosaics

OR

1 In.x1 In. Emperador Verde Polished / Tumbled Mosaics

The problem with the interwebs is that you can’t see the detail and feel the texture. I think I’m leaning more towards the ‘Emperador Verde’ ones because of the detail. It has small squares of marble and stone which make the tiles pop and look stunning in person. This will tie in the gray tub with the cream-ish floor tiles and white grout.

It has been a long reno for a family with small kids. The house has been a mess. And it took me forever to even narrow down the tiles because I wanted the finishing to be right, even if it costs a little bit more than I expected. I’m going to use these tiles, which come at $10.99/sq for accenting and use plain tiles for the filler, which will keep the costs down. Then, I’m going to use large cream marble or glass tiles for the counter, which won’t be costly because I’ll probably only need less than 10 tiles.

I am sooooo ready for this to be over. Seriously.

Renos are no fun. They’re fun to watch as someone else goes through them, but to actually go through it yourself is a whole other story.

So we’re almost done and I hate hate hate the (cheap) counter top that we have, primarily because we had no say in what we got. The bad thing about working with this contractor is that he sometimes makes decisions without consulting. You give him an idea and he runs with it. It has its benefits and consequences.

For the most part, things have worked out well. The problem is that we have a gray tub and I don’t really want to paint it white. I want to tie the colour in with tiles. We had planned to paint it and so I got a sand coloured tile for the floor. Now that I’ve changed my mind, I’m going to have to find something that connects the tub tiles with the tub colour and the floor colour.

…in comes my idea of using mosaic tiles. And maybe not just mosaic, but to use the same tile on the counter with the tub area. Here are some of the ideas I’ve found (ignore the colours and location).

I’m gonna run with this idea. This is just the beginning…

By the way, I’m doing this reno ALL wrong. I should have the ideas FIRST then start. What was I thinking?