A Little Bit Of Hallway, A Whole Lot Of Bathroom Tile

Wow, well that was quite a blog break, wasn't it? Sorry about that, usually I'm very productive in the winter (the low temperatures gets my blood pumping) but for some reason, this year all I've wanted to do is curl up on the couch and nap with the cats and the wiener dog. I wish I could report that the hubby and I have been hard at work packing, cleaning and organizing during the hiatus, but honestly we've been sorta lazy and just devolved into our usual patterns (cooking fancy weekend meals, going to parties with friends, playing way too many online games, etc). Design has kind of slowed too because poor Karen and has been very sick this winter- nothing too serious (thank goodness) but just really yucky stuff like nasty head colds and the stomach flu. Fortunately, spring is coming, everyone is on the mend and hopefully we'll be able to finalize our plans, get our financing, and start the renovation soon!

In the meantime I have a few things to show you. Take a look at this picture of the floorplan:



Notice the colorful square in the front hallway? That is actually going to be a multi-hued design painted directly onto the floor. It is supposed to be reminiscent of a classic quilt pattern- but get this, it's also going to be able to function as a chessboard! The hubby can have friends over and play over-sized chess on the floor in our front hallway. How cool is that? I think this painted floor "rug" was a very clever way to incorporate both of our passions into the design of our house. You'll also notice down the length of the hallway there is a sort of "cross-hatch rug" that will also be painted directly onto the floor. The colors of this "rug runner" will match with the colors of the front hall "quilt/chessboard rug", giving us a very neat and inventive way to tie the whole hallway together. I couldn't be more tickled with this idea!

Now, let's move on to the bathroom, shall we? For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the front of our house (the top of the above picture) is north. As you enter our bathroom from the bedroom and turn left and look along the west wall, this is what you are going to see:



That's the tub along the bottom with a window over it, and an open shower area to the far right of the picture. Note that there is a line in that picture that follows a little over halfway up the wall, then sorta over the window and the shower area? Well everything below that line (including the window frame) is going to be covered in this beautiful "graduated" (that means the color changes subtly) autumnal purple tile:



(ignore the white tile in that photo, it was put there to show the beautiful Japanese maple leaf that served as an inspiration for the bathroom color)

The tile will continue across the entire room, stretching around the window on the north wall here (shown beside our shower):



And all the way around the east wall where our two sinks will be:



Karen has designed a little nook between the sinks (for display and storage) and two mirrors above the sink- all of which will be framed in tile as well. Did you notice that marble sample in the tile photo? Well, our sinks will be custom made out of that marble and will be sitting on rusty, antique pillars.

But, what about the floor? Well, Karen has come up with a very cool idea for it. You see, Victorian houses often had fancy tile work in their front hallways, and she took the inspiration for our bathroom floor from them. It should look something like this:



Notice how it looks like a quilt? Well that's not by accident!

Sometimes I look at these elaborate plans, and I hardly think I deserve such a rich, beautiful bathroom...but then I remember I've been living with this for 8 long years:





I think it's time for a little pampering, don't you?