Brian's Bathroom

If you know Brian, you know that he loves to take baths. So, when he laid eyes on the dark slate colored tile in the model home's master bath, he was over the moon with excitement. According to Brian, he wants a luxurious spa bath feel like none other. That actually made it easy for us to choose the master bath tile (Dal tile, Veranda Series) with 13x20 inch gunmetal tiles and charcoal grount on the floor and 13x13 inch tiles on the wall.

The one hang-up was the accent tile along the wall. For some reason, the tile company matched up a Nascar-like checkered flag tile motif with the more organic slate tile, which we just weren't digging. You can see that along the wall in the photo from the model home above.

In lieu of the checkered tile, we decided to request a white/gray marble "Arabescato" listello with white grout to be laid as brick joints around the wall over the tub. We think it has more of a classic look, so we're hoping it will work. Apparently, no one has ever requested the gunmetal tile and the marble together before. We'll have white cabinetry with meteorite granite in the master bath to complete the black and white look. See below for a photo:


See below for a sample of our meteorite granite:

Needless to say, when we were finished, we were pretty exhausted and pretty happy with our selections.

Floors Galore

The wiring meeting seemed to go exceptionally smooth...and then we went to Exceptional Choices Flooring where we looked at oodles of hardwood, carpet, and tile options. While we initially thought we'd stick with a lighter hardwood, we decided to switch things up a bit and choose a medium brown wood with a color called "Saddle." We had no idea there were so many variations of wood and that things like the width of the bevel could impact your ability to Swiffer?! We're told that the darker hardwood has a little bit more of a contemporary look.

Just one of many, many, many cabinets and drawers filled with floor samples (above).

We liked the contrast between the Saddle brown hardwood and our cabinetry (Tahoe, Maple Spice) and granite countertops (Tan Brown color). The entire first floor will be hardwood. See above.

Here's another view of the Tan Brown granite that will be in our kitchen:

We also decided to upgrade our carpet to a stain-resistant Parkway Classic carpet in Toast color. It was pretty funny, because when we were looking at swatches, I would say "can I see that big piece of toast?" The entire upstairs (except the bathrooms and laundry room) will be carpeted.



Above is a photo of our "Toast" carpet, upgraded Defender 1/2 inch thick fully recyclable carpet pad, small piece of linoleum we'll have in the upstairs laundry room and the oak cabinetry for the upstairs laundry room.