Tile! Part 2

As you can tell, my taste in tile is pretty simple. Something in the white/gray family and the more it looks like marble the better. :)

Not really, but yeah. Really.

Here's a pic from a showroom I visited. I though it was neat to see what a shower would look like if I did the entire thing in the subway-style marble 2x4s:


I would by no means do the accent strip. Nothing against accent strips. Except that I don't like them.I liked it how the shower looked but I'm not sure. It might be a bit busy for my taste. I think I may lean towards using a bigger tile. Something like this:

This bad boy may look like marble but it's not. It's porcelain. (The best for bathroom floors! If it chips it's ok because it is solid all the way through. Not coated. And basicially it doesn't chip ever. And with 3 stinky farm kids with boots and spurs...probably not spurs. Or boots. But definitely stinky kids then the tougher the bathroom the better.)

Anyway. It's big. 18x18 and very pretty. There was this one with big taupe-y veins. Or this one...

This one had much less variation in color but what was showing was mainly gray. I think this would be great on the bathroom floors and possibly just take it on up into the showers too.

Next up. Some options for around the master tub. The master will be a bit different than the other two baths. For one thing, the wood floors are gonna go straight into there as well. It's not a big master at all, but I'm searching for some ways to make a bit more dramatic. I want the other two baths to be white, bright, clean, and pretty. But I want this bath to feel more private and romantic. We are keeping the built-ins because the mama's bathroom is where all the junk gets stored. Band-aids, heating pads, medicines, everything like that will be in here so the cabinets will be nice. I will definitely get a new sink and counter-top though. The tub will stay because it will be the only tub in the house. And though a clawfoot is out of the question, I thought we could add some big slate tile around the tub for flair.

A big 12x24 slate. I love, love, love it! It's big and when hung on the horizontal I think it would be very  big statement!

This bamboo looking tile is similar and a super great price but a little more on the trendy side. I wish I could pull off trendy. However, I can't and I think I would get tired of it after awhile.

Here is one of the options I thought about for the laundry room. The fur-down (or whatever the heck that thing is called...the wall above the cabinets) is gonna have corrugated tin on it. Cute, right!? And I figure a laundry room can be a bit industrial. So what about stainless steel backsplash with a few glass tiles thrown in for prettiness?

It's an option.

And countertops. Man, countertops. I am at a loss. I hate the look of granite. I know, I know. I'm crazy. But I just don't like it that much. And for how expensive it is, I feel like I should at least like it, if not loooooooove it. But I don't. Everyone I tell that to says, "Well you just haven't seen the right granite." Because apparently I am crazy to even say that I don't like it. Everyone also says that I would be crazy to put marble in the kitchen because it will stain, crack, chip, and just spontaneously combust from the way they talk. So, I won't do that.

But what's left?

Butcher block...which is going on the island but I don't want miles and miles of it. Which is how much countertop we have.

So, quartz? Even more expensive than granite. Formica. Uh, heck no. Even with how good they've made it look these days it still feels like a piece of cereal box when you touch it.

So, I'm thinking maybe concrete?

I still want to see some concrete countertops in person because I've only seen them in pictures. And they look awesome in pictures. But I am a tactile person and have to touch something before I like it. 

The picture above is the sample of granite that "looks like concrete". It's $60 a square foot (which is actually one of the cheaper granites I've seen) but still just looks like gray granite to me. :)

Any ideas?