When tile goes wrong

Well, the flip house is getting close to being done…but not really.  We have had some a major blunders in the tile department. Which I will explain in a minute. The good news is,  we have made progress on the 92 square foot office.  Remember it was an odd patio in between the kitchen and living room. The interior window walls are now dry walled, and the sliding glass pocket doors now replace the patio slider

The drywall wall is now up and the ceiling treatment of tongue and grove with beams inserts are installed. My plan is to paint the tongue and grove white and the beams stained dark.  Mimicking what I did in the kitchen with the white cabinets and dark island.

The rest of the house is is coming along as well.  In the kitchen I went with Quartz in cashmere for the countertops and a beautiful honed marble remnant for the island

Those island lights didn’t stay.  The scale was too small and honestly they looked cheap up close. Bummer because they wern’t that cheap.  Oh well, the company took them back and instead I got these Hudson Pendants from Crate and Barrel

Yes one is missing…it unfortunately did not have the bracket in the box to hang it, so now I am waiting on a new one.  Check out that microwave drawer!  It has a button you push to open it. This neighborhood is for 55 and older so they won’t have the worry of little ones messing with it.

The tile backsplash is a 2″ x 8″ glass tile, kind of a grey green, and it just sets off the whole kitchen.  I used the same tile for the hood cooktop area, but put it on a herringbone pattern.  It brings interest to the area and yet still keeps the look clean.

But all this it is coming down today…yep you read that right.  We haven’t really figured it out as to why, but once it was installed and grouted it had a zipper effect in between the grout and tile. Some might argue it was the installer, some might argue it was the material.  I argued it was not good enough and the tile setter and the tile company agreed and are re-doing it at their cost. Here is the zipper effect I am talking about

This is before grout

And after grout

Do you see in between the grout lines there are “zipper like” lines?  That shouldn’t happen, it should be one solid line of grout.  To be honest, no one I brought over noticed it until I pointed it out.  So would the potential buyer ever notice?  Probably not until they spent some time in the kitchen, then I think it they would eventually notice it.

They other tile fiasco I have had is on the bathroom flooring.  I choose a limestone herringbone tile that was a combination of two colors. Love, love loved the sample.  I loved it even more when all the boxes of tile came.  Oh yeah, it was going to be epic once it was down.

And it was an epic alright, an epic failure.  The movement of that tile once it was installed gave you a nauseated feeling. It took on a 3-D effect that was kinda cool but very disturbing at the same time.   I don’t know if you can even see the effect it takes on in these pictures

But believe me, it was NOT a good tile to have on a floor.  And to top it off, this house is for 55 and over, and as I know first hand, your eyesight is the first to go as you age, and one thing you DON”T want, is to put in a floor that has movement like this…womp womp womp.  So it’s coming out as well, sigh…

The medicine cabinets are installed, but the rest of the lighting, plumbing fixtures and painting will be done after the re-install of the floors

Those are Restoration Hardware medicine cabinets that are the bomb. You might remember it form the last bathroom remodel I did

They are on final sale right now, I highly recommend getting one if you are in the market for a medicine cabinet that doesn’t look like a medicine cabinet.

Anyway..on to the drama of the tile.  We have now gutted the floors and are putting a large tile that looks like linen but doesn’t have movement thank God.  It’s a set back these tile errors, but it is worth it to fix it.  That 3-D floor could of been a deal breaker.  Live and learn.

The bathroom wall tiles are a porcelain “Calcutta look” tile and they really do look like Calcutta marble but without the price tag

We are keeping the herringbone pattern in the master shower.  For whatever reason it doesn’t take on the 3-D effect in there. These two bathrooms have no natural light so pardon the poor quality of pictures

When you are remodeling a home, you will run into issues that you didn’t foresee.  I’d say I have had more than my fair share this go around, especially with the tile, but hopefully we have gotten over that hurdle and it will all be down hill from here! {fingers crossed}