Now It's Time for the Tile and Countertop!

The shopping phase of my bathroom renovation is almost complete. All I need is tile, the counter top, and the shower door. For the tiles, I went straight to StoneWorks in Framingham.

I have worked with Wendy Savoie and the owner Ed Foye for several years now. Wendy has a degree in Interior Design and really knows her product.

I can't stress enough how much time I save, and how many mistakes I don't make, by dealing with the experts I have come to know through networking in the interior design field. Time and mistakes have a cost that I am not willing to pay.

I go to my experts with either specific or wide ranging ideas, and they take me directly to the products that will fit my needs. I don't have to look at every product in every store and worry that I have made a bad choice with respect to quality, or that the product is not right for my particular application. I never find my experts at big box stores - my experts have years of experience in the stores they work in, and they can give me one-on-one time in a way that big box stores cannot. Their time and expertise is "free", which adds more value to the buying equation.

Getting back to the tiles ... again I went armed with exact measurements of the bathroom and pictures of tile designs I liked. I also brought a sample of the vanity color and a picture of the cabinet style I had chosen. I knew I wanted my choices to be somewhat neutral, with eventual selling in mind, but I also wanted some pizazz. I needed my choices to be low maintenance, and not easily stained. The counter, I had decided already, would be an engineered stone, mostly in order to have more choices in a light creamy and consistent, pattern and color.

I chose a counter color I liked and then a white crackled tile. I used my magazine pictures, and pictures on tile sample boards, to inspire a tile pattern I felt was "current". I used a white baseboard tile and then 3 rows of 4"x8" white tiles stacked vertically for the wainscoting. On top of that was a chair rail pattern made of cream pencil moulding, white 2"x8" tiles running horizontally, a row of decorative glass tile in green, white, and tan, more 2"x8" white tiles,and finally a cream chair moulding.

My wainscoting would go around the tub area, and then into the shower, even with the pencil and chair moulding, which would "bump out" and provide a challenge for the shower door installer who would want a flat surface (before I ordered the tile I consulted with my glass door person to make sure that a door installation was possible). Above the wainscoting in the shower I would run the 2"x8" white tiles horizontally up to the ceiling.

I met again with Steve Dennis, the person who would be doing the bathroom renovation, in order to get his guidance on how much tile I needed to order. He determined that my creativity would come at the price of an upcharge for the extra time involved, but I was willing to pay for it. I did choose NOT to run the floor tiles diagonnally, as a way to keep other costs down.

One more thing to do: line up the glass door!