Tile Selections: Master Bathroom

The drywall went up so quickly that before we knew it, our kitchen cabinets were also (partially) installed, along with the interior doors and bathroom tile. It is incredible to me how professionals can complete tasks that literally took months for us to DIY at our old home in a matter of a few days. The longest-running task so far has actually been one of the physically smallest jobs, go figure.

Along with the whirlwind of these tasks came the first of a series of jobs for us: master bathroom tile. While we chose to go with builder options for the kids' bathroom and laundry room, we wanted to completely customize our own space and to do so, we needed the freedom to pick our own tile. One of the factors that sold us on our builder at the start was his openness toward letting us interfere with his work, and it's been so nice to make choices that we will actually want to live with for awhile instead of going with entirely builder-grade selections even though we don't have the budget for a fully custom home.

As always, I started with Pinterest, and these aspirational bathrooms:

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Luckily, there's a bit of a theme in my tastes. While I love all four images (and drooled over many, many more rooms as well), the first two feel more "precious" than the rest of our house plans. We have black and white all over our house, not least in our tuxedo kitchen, so it felt really natural to just go for it here. 

We bit the bullet, made a 3 hour trip to a tile shop that stocked the options we preferred so that we could avoid a building delay, and three days later our master bathroom went from drywalled with the start of a cabinet installation:

To this!

Although we debated back and forth for days about grout color, we settled on a light gray that provides higher contrast between the hex tiles (clearly there's a good haze/ bad light in this photo) but a more uniform look in the subway tile, and so far I am thrilled with the progress.

Next up: paint, lighting, black granite countertops, and mirror selection(s).

E-Haus Decor Plans: The Main Bathroom

With our upcoming move, we will be moving from a single bathroom to 2.5 bathrooms. Having spent my entire adult life carting toiletries to and fro from bathrooms that are shared in some way, I almost didn't know where to start in terms of making plans for each space. Furthermore, my kids have their own bathroom in this house (well, except for when we have guests until we finish our basement), so I get to figure out a designated kid space for the first time. 

We planned this bathroom to be a blank slate (read: generic) that can be decorated and redecorated easily as our kids grow up from small to tall: rectangular gray tiles laid in a brickwork pattern, a white cabinet with double sinks, slate gray granite countertops and a low-impact brushed nickel light fixture. Then, after multiple false starts, I recalled our now-homeless art from the gender neutral nursery we left behind, and used it to make a plan for adding in some personality. Apparently, even for kids, I love texture more than color.  At least I'm consistent.

1, 8, 16: Hooded towels are adorable and also practical for small people. 

          2: The above-mentioned towels will hang on three of these elephant hooks that I plan to hang across from the vanity.

         3: The light fixture we chose.

         4: Historically we have had major problems with bath mats that get kicked around and folded and lost among our laundry. A bamboo mat will add some warmth to an otherwise cool space and hopefully some durability as well. 

        5: Slate gray granite. I kind of love the lighter matte pieces in it that may camouflage the less than pristine spots that are inevitable in a kids' space.

        6: We found a similar low stool with warm wooden legs and an entirely white and gray elephant top. This will make an ideal extra surface for both a parent who bathes kids and a kid who needs a boost at the vanity. It doesn't hurt that the stool repeats the color AND animal pattern we've got going on. 

   7, 10: Two of the three pieces of our nursery art. 

   9, 14: The bamboo finish will repeat in the wastebasket and shower curtain hooks.

        11: Tile, gray floors with white cabinet.  

        12: We opted to provide all of our own lighting and mirrors throughout our home. In this space we decided to use two round mirrors with modern wooden frames in lieu of a standard frameless rectangle.

       13: A non-slip mat inside the tub is a must with small people. At least in this iteration the color would help tie in aqua balloon art.

       15: We have forever used a ruffled aqua ombre shower curtain, but now it feels like overkill. We already have a solid white curtain in a waffle texture, so it's an easy choice.

Reality [Our Budget] is Setting In

Now that we are a day away from actually getting some machinery on our property and building this house, many more decisions are starting to come into play, which is both exciting and terrifying. We are finally looking at specific kitchen layouts and talking with designers about our weird ideas to see just how realistic they are.

We are also getting the real numbers behind the choices and upgrades that we've been hoping to make. This is where perhaps our home journey sets us apart from other people building custom homes-- we don't have the budget to do everything we want to do, and as it turns out, everything we want to do is definitely more expensive than we anticipated. The hickory hardwoods I posted about? Yikes. Fiber cement siding? Yikes-er. So it's time to make some cuts.

Some decisions are easy. We aren't having our built-ins done by our builder because we are more than capable of doing them ourselves, and in fact prefer to do so. We are also going with some inexpensive options for the time being that we will upgrade ourselves when we can. But when it comes to decisions like the quandry above, it's kind of a headache.

In this case, we made that decision because we had to, and when we turned off our hearts-- because my heart really, really "needs" both options-- it was clear. We were looking to upgrade from hardwood to a different hardwood, or from a finish choice that I abhor to one that I love for many reasons. And vinyl seems like it could make us cringe for years, whereas we'll happily live with the standard wood floors. So, yeah! Upgraded wood is out and Hardie Board is in. Best of all, we can make this compromise without compromising our move-in budget and ability to buy some furniture.

Now please keep your fingers crossed about our quartz countertops. Because I'm pretty sure that whatever numbers I'm given there are going to make me cry*.

*Inside. Please someone shake me if I ever actually shed physical tears over a finish selection. It just isn't that serious.

All About that Wood

One of the first things we knew about our next house-- whether we ended up buying or building-- was that we needed hardwood floors in the living areas. We were spoiled by them in our first house, and they are infinitely easier than other flooring options (in my opinion) to clean and deal with when a problem arises. Even our experiences with tile in living areas has been problematic. That stuff shatters when hit right, and either we are awesomely accurate at dropping kitchen items and optimizing the damage, or we had seriously bad luck, but we have a solid track record of at least two broken tiles per year in our former kitchen.

Here in 2015, the options for wood floors are many. Did we want hardwood or engineered wood? Shiny or matte? Pre-finished or stained on site? Painted? Dark, light, white, gray? Wide or skinny planks, or something in between? Laid traditionally or in some kind of pattern? Heavy or minimal grain? Hand-scraped? Beveled or smooth? And the choices go on. But given my aesthetic, most of these choices were easy. It was really in the breakdown of engineered versus traditional that we wavered for a while.

ENGINEERED HARDWOOD FLOORS: The wood surface is much thinner than in a traditional plank-- it's a veneer. There are multiple layers of material that have been pressed together, and normally the center is plywood although the specifics vary a bit. Due to the thinness of the exterior veneer, engineered hardwood can only be resurfaced a finite number of times (some can only be recoated and not refinished, but many can be refinished a few times if needed) but also its construction makes for less expansion and change due to weather and settling as well as creates an overall harder surface. Engineered hardwood can be low quality, but it can also be very high quality; it depends on the manufacturer.

TRADITIONAL HARDWOOD FLOORS: These are also layered, but the exterior part is much thicker than engineered hardwood and it is sliced from the log. This is just traditional wood flooring and prone to the same problems-- moisture, settling, dings and dents, etc..  It goes without saying that overall wood quality and hardness/ softness varies based on both the tree and the manufacturer.

Ultimately we found that the differences between the two were not nearly as dramatic as some of the other decisions that we're coming up against (see: vinyl versus fiber cement) and that furthermore, both options have great advantages as well as some disadvantages. We wanted pre-finished flooring for multiple reasons, including a more consistent finish that wouldn't depend on dust/ dirt/ hairs and people not walking on them for some time after installation, the durability of factory finish, and of course the cost advantage. So ultimately, this battle came down to our simple preference. We ended up choosing a number of wood flooring options-- both engineered and hardwood-- and looked at them both in pictures and in real life. A hickory hardwood ended up being our clear favorite and the winner, and I cannot wait to see them installed in our house eventually.

First of all, we love that hickory is one of the hardest domestic wood species, which we hope means that it will hold up nicely against the demands of our young and wild family. But most of all, we love the slightly rough but not insanely wavy finish, the darker color of it (it is notably darker in person), and the high variation of tone within that dark finish for a more organic look.

Countertop finishes are up next!