Picking Out Bathroom Tiles

Ok, one more day to go and now I can tell that I'm freaking out!

There is so much to do and there are so many decisions to make... I'm usually pretty good at decision making, but this is proving to be a bit overwhelming. These are pretty big decisions!

I was having a hard time picking wall colors for the house, and those can be easily changed. Imagine how hard is for me right now to pick tiles for our bathroom renovation! And my husband has said that I need to know by Friday. Today is Wednesday. Argh! Pressure will certainly not help!

There are so many pretty bathrooms out there. I've been looking at close to 1,000 different bathroom styles, color combinations, pictures of before and after... at first we weren't even supposed to do the bathroom (located on the second floor, by the way). We were going to live with it for a little. First we were going to do the kitchen. Then somewhere in the middle things got switched around and now we're doing the bathroom first.

Oh, and let me say, we are on a tight budget. We pretty much don't have any money saved for any of these renovations. So we're either going to pay as we go or pay with some loan money I'm thinking of getting soon. And no, we're not rich making tons of money each month, either.

So when I told my husband that we should start with the bathroom (and my decision came because he scared me with stories of breaking up the old tub and then carrying up a new tub, and in the midst of it all destroying my newly carpeted floors), I told him we would do it on the cheap.

On the cheap meant keeping the old stuff like toilet, sink and maybe refacing the tub. Then to save on tiles, we would have a beadboard around the bathroom, paint on the upper half of the walls, and tiles only in the shower. He agreed.

On the cheap meant he was going to do all the renovation work. He is pretty handy so I was ok with that.

But going back and seeing the house to take measurements, thinking about it and sleeping on it, has made us change our minds in a few places. The tub is really old. The house is from 1930 and the tub probably came with it. It needs to go. And at that point, I want a new toilet, because yes, I've been renting until now and I've never really had a "virgin" toilet, so I think it's time I do. The sink will have to match the shiny new items... so now we're buying everything new!

Then I started looking for tiles. I had a first idea. This.

This is a bathroom from a hotel we stayed at this summer down in Florida, and I remember when I walked in the first time it felt so nice. What I loved were the big tiles with almost no grout lines. Back in our apartment, we had little white square tiles with tons of grout and water that leaves a reddish mark wherever it touches. At one point I gave up the fight against it. So when I saw these tiles, I fell in love. 

The rest of the bathroom was very spa like with a big mirror, a big vanity with granite counter top and green grasscloth wallpaper.

I promised myself to try and recreate this bathroom once we had bought our first home (back in the summer we were already looking for it but I was losing hope of finding something I would really love in our budget range).

Before I looked back at my hotel tiles, the idea I had to go with the white beadboard was something like this, with blue or green paint on the walls:

Now I went back to look at my dream tiles, and something was not right anymore: how was I going to integrate the tiles in beige with the white beadboard? Any picture online of bathrooms with white beadboard had white tiles around the tub (most of them subway tile! I'm not a big fan of subway tiles).

So now I was supposed to integrate a white beadboard with beige tiles and blue paint. Hmmm, I'm not good with the simple stuff, imagine how fast my head was spinning in front of this dilemma. 

Something had to go. And at first I figured maybe I could change the paint color to beige. Beige tiles, beige walls, white beadboard. 

Then, after reading about the beadboard possibly molding in the bathroom, I decided against it. 

Now I had to tell my husband. He's not into changing things around a million times. But I presented the mold problem and he understood. 

So maybe we were just going to do paint all over and just tiles around the tub. 

But after my first visit to a tile store, and upon learning that a big tile only costs $3 per square foot, I thought to myself, hey, this is not that expensive! 

Sure tiles are expensive, depending on which ones you choose, and also big bathrooms I'm sure must cost a lot to fill with tiles. But our bathroom? Our little old colonial bathroom? How much could that cost?

Well, I was going to find out... soon enough.

Stay tuned for more...