Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Tile Project that Wouldn't Die - LIVES!

After 5 months, many trips to the tile supplier, the enevitable expansion of the project from: "I'll finish the tile in the shower; you lay a new floor and bath surround", A new (unforseen) tub,new (unforseen) faucet set, new tub/wall/floor modification to WE ARE FINISHED!!!

I had the shower stall (And STALL is the operative word here) to this point when my trials at making tiles had come to a stopping point. In the meantime, the tile manufacturer changed glaze lots for the field (blue) tile which really put me in a quandry. The color was close......but not a perfect match. I had enough tile to fill in around the original design, but not enough for a different design.

I had made and fired 4 different trials at inserting a flowing design across three walls. Each time, I would be unhappy with the results. I finally decided to put in a band of fish and was stuck with buying the similar color tile for the rest of it. I figured I could break the two color areas apart and no one would see the difference. I worked. The upper tile near the windows is lighter; the lower a tad darker. You never see it.


In Progress:

By the time the windows are surrounded, the shower door installed on the outside, the eye just assumes that the difference is the light.










































This is the tub before:












And after:











The tub surround and floor tiles are the same. The faucets are from Kohler--sort of a hybrid tub filler and handle arrangement, but I just fell in love with the handles. The big tub filler brings the water level up from 0 to drowning in about 20 seconds.









We even added a little barrier/seat between the tub and shower with a niche for flowers.


1 comment:

Liz Harrell said...

Oh wow! These look great!