Master Bathroom - tile complete!

You might remember this post where I went through the whole process of tile selection for the master bathroom. It was quite a long description of how we ended up picking what we did.  We ended up going with karina wavy travertine tile - large tiles on the floor, small tiles around the bathtub, and subway tiles in our shower.  

Karina wavy is supposed to look like this:

So imagine my surprise when I walked in Monday morning and the floor looked like this:

Maybe some of you can't see the difference, or don't see what the big deal was.  But look at the subway tiles on the bottom of those pictures compared to the tile on the floor.  What was on the floor was a LOT darker than what I thought should be on the floor.  And a lot darker than what was going in the shower and around the tub.  

Unfortunately, this tile fit my biggest fear of travertine.  I didn't want brown, earthy travertine.  I wanted ivory colored travertine - light and breezy.  Not dark.  And I wanted all the tile in our bathroom to match and not look different.  So I called up Ann and Arthur, let them know my concerns, and we met there the next morning before the tile guy continued.  They agreed that the tile was darker than the rest of the Karina Wavy tile.  So they went back to Floor & Decor and saw that the tile was, in fact, Karina Wavy.  It just happened that the majority of the larger tiles came in a dark color.  

I've tried really hard not to be high maintenance throughout the project.  Things don't always go your way - I get that.  But I've also learned that, since we're doing this thing from ground up, changing things at this point is a lot cheaper and easier than changing them later on if you really don't like them.  It's not necessarily worth it to just live with a floor you don't want.  Luckily our master bath floor isn't that much space or in any intricate pattern - so having the tile guys remove the floor tile didn't cost us too much in lost tile, or too much in extra labor time.  So that's what happened.  They removed all the dark tiles on the floor (saving the few that were lighter) while Ann and Arthur picked through all the large Karina Wavy tiles at Floor & Decor and grabbed all the lightest tiles.  (Major thanks to them - they also went through all the downstairs bathroom travertine tiles to get rid of the uglier tiles).  

So that's the story of the master bathroom tile stress.  The rest of it went off without a hitch.  The one special request I made with the tile layout was to put the subway tiles in the shower in a herringbone pattern.  I thought it would add a little more interest and look great.  I think I was right - here's the final shower:

And the rest of the bathroom:

(View from the shower)

Doesn't that floor tile look much better?

All the bathrooms are fully tiled now.  All that's left to finish them up is to bring in the vanities, toilets, lights, and fixtures.  

The kitchen cabinets are almost done - they should be finished up today (a little bit of drama went along with them as well - which is why they are taking more than a week to be completed).  They started priming the inside of the house today and should finish up painting next week.  And the carpenter has finished up his other projects (TV stand and fireplace mantle).  I would have updated the blog about those two today, but I couldn't get good pictures yesterday since everything was covered in plastic due to the priming.  I'll post them as soon as I can!

It's getting very close to completion......