Our bathroom remodel plans have continued to evolve, as happens with any home project. My initial ideas merged with our budget, and we had to scale back. Penny tile is more expensive than I thought. This was what we were thinking for the kid’s bath:
Modern Bathroom by Louisville Architects & Designers Rock Paper Hammer
The one exception to that design being the tile color. I’m about to be outnumbered by men in my house, 3:1. There is no way I’m putting white tile where my sons are potty-training. Once I started searching for colored penny tile, though, I was coming to about $10 a square foot. With supplies that would almost triple my $200 budget. As an alternative, I found something similar to this at homedepot.com:
The one exception to that design being the tile color. I’m about to be outnumbered by men in my house, 3:1. There is no way I’m putting white tile where my sons are potty-training. Once I started searching for colored penny tile, though, I was coming to about $10 a square foot. With supplies that would almost triple my $200 budget. As an alternative, I found something similar to this at homedepot.com:
Traditional Bathroom by Seattle Interior Designers & Decorators Kara Bowman
It was only $1.99 a square foot and had good reviews, so Grant and I drove to the only store in our area that stocked it. I was surprised to see The Tile Shop in the same strip mall. We went in to check it out and found a great assortment of colored penny tile for $5.79. It was still over budget, but not by nearly as much. One huge benefit to penny tile is that I won’t have to saw. Using a wet saw isn’t so bad, but not using one is definitely better. The small size means I’ll be able to use tile clippers and cover the edges with baseboard. After reading some forums I was already concerned about notching door jams on the 12 x 24″, so after conferring with my husband, we decided to forego changing out the vanity and buy the pricier tile. Ultimately that will save us a couple hundred dollars, and the vanity really isn’t that terrible:
It was only $1.99 a square foot and had good reviews, so Grant and I drove to the only store in our area that stocked it. I was surprised to see The Tile Shop in the same strip mall. We went in to check it out and found a great assortment of colored penny tile for $5.79. It was still over budget, but not by nearly as much. One huge benefit to penny tile is that I won’t have to saw. Using a wet saw isn’t so bad, but not using one is definitely better. The small size means I’ll be able to use tile clippers and cover the edges with baseboard. After reading some forums I was already concerned about notching door jams on the 12 x 24″, so after conferring with my husband, we decided to forego changing out the vanity and buy the pricier tile. Ultimately that will save us a couple hundred dollars, and the vanity really isn’t that terrible:
It isn’t what I would choose, but it has a Corian top and is in good condition. We can always change it in the future. The worst things in the room are the toilet and the flooring, both of which are stained beyond repair. If you want to spare yourself a dirty toilet shot, scroll past the next photo, which also contains some of the remaining flooring, in case you missed it in my last post:
My wonderful husband is upstairs removing that beauty as I write this, so this is the first and last time I will be featuring it on the blog (to our credit, we are not responsible for the stains, Grant is still in diapers and we have our own bathroom).
This is the tile I ended up buying:
I shot it with about six different light settings, but I don’t think I’ll really be able to capture the colors until it is installed. We like it, there is a lot of variation, which I wanted, and it goes with the vanity. The style will also blend with the 4 x 4 white shower tile, so the bathroom doesn’t scream “we renovated 25% of this room”. We want our renovations to flow and look seemless, which sometimes means that we have to go with a style we weren’t immediately drawn to in order to fit the age of the house. Hopefully we accomplish that here, I’ll start tiling tomorrow, so we will know soon enough!
