Bathroom tile

We spent about 3 hours at Floor & Decor yesterday selecting the tile for all of our bathrooms.  I'm so glad that's done now!  It was a decision I've been dwelling over for quite awhile and anxious to actually decide and move past it.  Thank goodness Ann is patient and willing to work with us to price out and see if our "dream" master bathroom was possible, and then sit and wait while we decide if it is worth it.


I'll start with the easy bathrooms (which is where we started yesterday).


Upstairs Guest Bath:
I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted in the upstairs bathroom.  You can see the vanity we chose here.  I knew I wanted some dark slate floor and white subway tile (if you know our first house well, you might recall that that is the same as we have in our bathroom.  And I really like the look).  Here are a few inspiration pictures:

So this is what we picked out.... 

Black slate 12x12 tiles on the floor:

(ignore the accent tiles)

With traditional subway tile alternating with 6x6 matching white porcelain tile.  We went with the alternating pattern to give it a little more visual interest.  

Traditional subway tile (ignore the accent pieces)

Alternating with these 6x6 pieces.

I think the black slate will look good with the black granite vanity top.  And I think the bright white of the subway tile will contrast nicely.  Just in case you're curious, I'm kind of thinking about going with this shower curtain from West Elm:

I think the yellow stripes would look good with the black and white of the bathroom.  And a little school-spirited I guess :)

Ok, moving downstairs

Downstairs Guest Bath:

It also wasn't very hard to decide what we wanted down there.  We decided to go with travertine on the floor and shower walls.  You can see our vanity here (it's the first one).  And the bathroom will probably end up looking sort of like this:

(that toilet being open in the pic really bugs me, but there's nothing I can do about it...)

The main difference is that there won't be tile around the tub like in this picture.

We looked at porcelain tile that was similar to travertine, but we found travertine for a great price that we liked, so we went with that instead.  And we're kind of stone snobs, unfortunately.  Luckily for us though, we didn't have to compromise (in this bathroom at least)!

The tile we picked out for the downstairs bathroom is the one in the middle.  It is Tuscan Walnut travertine tiles.

I would love a frilly shower curtain like this one from Anthropologie:

However, I can assure you we won't be getting that one.  1) Because it's from Anthropologie and is a bit $$$, and 2) Because I can guarantee you Kyle won't be a fan.  Bummer.

Moving on to the bathroom that by far took the most amount of time...

Master Bathroom:

I'll start with a few inspirational pictures that we started with, to remember the decision journey we've been on.

First, we really wanted a travertine master bathroom.  (Yes, we really like travertine).  This is one picture that inspired us:

And then I fell in love with Carrera marble bathrooms that had a feeling like this one:

Kyle didn't really care between the two.  But once I showed him some pictures like this one:

And asked him how he felt about subway marble tile in the shower, he was sold.  On having natural stone subway tile in the shower.  So our dream bathroom was designed in my mind.  It would have 12x12 carrara marble tiles on the floor, carrara marble subway tiles in the shower, and small carrara marble tiles surrounding the tub.

The only problem: our master bathroom requires a LOT of tile.  The shower walls themselves need 125 sq ft. of tile.  So we priced it out.  And it was quite pricey.  So then we decided we should look at other options and then decide if the marble was worth it.  

So back to the travertine we went.  And we saw these guys:

Travertine subway tile.  And I thought, well that would give us the subway tile look in the shower.

So I started envisioning this instead:

(minus the crazy looking vanity.  that's definitely not our style).

So we priced out a similar scheme using travertine instead of marble.  Travertine subway tiles on the shower wall, 12x12 tiles on the floor, 1x1 tiles wrapping around the tub, and 2x2 tiles on the shower floor.  The price was about $1500 less than the marble.  And around our budget.  

So we stood around and went back and forth about whether it would be worth it.  Kyle was indifferent between carrara marble and travertine.  I knew I loved the carrara marble, but I knew that we really needed to stay on budget.  There are a few other things we are hoping to get at the end of this, and if we want them, then we need to not blow through the budget now.  So we decided to go with the travertine.

Our final picks included:

Karina Wavy 12x12 tiles for the floor.  These are the ones on the right side of this picture this time.  Notice that one random dark tile - I'm going to do my best to pull out the dark tiles I don't like before the tile man does his job.  I'd rather not have them in our bathroom (yes, I'm picky).

Matching subway tile for the shower walls.

2x2 tiles for the shower floor (sorry the picture is a bit fuzzy).

And 1x1 tiles that will wrap around the tub (ignore the accent tiles).

Even though we didn't go with my dream bathroom, I really do like the travertine and am looking forward to it.  And I don't doubt for one second that we made the right decision.   

But since I really do love the look of carrara marble, I would like to include it somewhere in our house (in a smaller quantity, so that we can afford it).  So I'm thinking something like this in the kitchen, for the backsplash:

I think it would look great with our dream kitchen.