thuesen, I ordered the Sonoma Jade Glass tile from a local dealer. However, I called around to several dealers to see who had the best SF price. Believe it or not, I had gotten a dealer to price match another dealer. I think I was quoted anywhere from $31-$34 as the SF price from several places but had one at $24/SF and had a price match on that. Depending how much tile you are looking at ordering, that may or may not make a difference. Sometimes your tile person (if you have one) can get a discount but there are lots of variables since they have to get the price quoted to them (which may depend on how much business they have with the dealer) and they can choose to pass their discount on or not - plus may want to charge for their time in ordering and picking up tile. One thing to keep in mind is if you can find a place that regularly gets shipments from Sonoma and is one of the biggest dealers of Sonoma tile, then you may be looking at a lower cost for shipping and could possibly get your tile quicker. Most local dealers would have charged all these shipping and handling fees to cover the cost of their shipments from the manufacturer so it could be another $75-$100 for special order. The place I ordered from not only price matched, but more importantly only charged maybe $13 total for some portion of the freight shipping cost since they get weekly shipments.

Lovely! I like the classic white tile and porcelain and how you used furniture pieces in the bathroom. I love that the storage at the end of the tub has pull-outs that can be reached from the toilet. Your custom sink and backsplash and counter are unique and beautiful. Yours may be the first bathroom sink I have seen in which a small or medium dog could be washed! That is a good thing! I showed your pictures to my DH because I am thinking of classic tiled walls with a chair rail for when we redo our bath in a couple of years. He liked it! I was expecting him to say, "too old fashioned." He did not, he said it looked nice. From him, nice is a compliment. He even liked your rows of listello. I was just at the Tile Shop's site the other day looking at the Hampton tiles because someone was selling some on Craigslist. I am hoping to do as you did and get what I can cheaper there, and fill in the rest from the store. I can see that you worked very hard to secure all of your materials - and then cut the floor tiles to size and culled the Hampton tiles, too! You succeeded very well in getting the look you wanted while saving money along the way. Congratulations, and thank you for the pictures and great detail and supply list.

LOL - I'm not sure what you are representing there. I think everything gets squashed up when you try to represent area. All I'm thinking about is the bedroom in question and the doorways. How about this. There is a rectangle which is roughly 13 feet by 10.5 feet. The Top wall is a 5 foot portion and an 8 foot portion of the nook. The Left wall is 8 feet and has a bathroom entry at the bottom. The Bottom wall is 13 feet and has the doorway at the far left side. The Right wall is 10.5 feet and has a window on it. At this point where do you put the closet? Let's say the closet is 5' x 2' - which is a nice size. -- If you put it on the Left wall it makes the doorways somewhat tunnel like. -- If you put it on the 5 foot portion of the Top wall it narrows one part of the room further to 6 feet but doesn't create a tunnel. Maybe this is better in that it creates a 5 x 6 nook with closet and two doorways, and then an 8 x 10.5 area. If you draw this out, does it make sense? And is this better than either the 8 x 13 room? or the 10 x 10 and move plumbing room? which you first wrote about. Rachel

I have truly appreciated all your help in getting our project off the ground. Although it is the holiday tomorrow, we haven’t heard from our architect since last Thursday. We originally engaged our architect in February, and it will have been 5 months in the design phase of a 500 sf addition, which basically adds a master bed and bath. For context, it was supposed to take 4 weeks to get through design and on to construction documents. Instead, it has taken us 5 months. It took 4 weeks to provide an initial 2-story design which we liked, then 4 weeks to realize that he hadn’t accounted for the city setback and redesign a 2-story we didn’t like, 3 weeks to deliver a 1-story design without a setback (but that didn’t have a layout that worked), 2 weeks to redraw a drawing that I sent over. I pretty much thought we were done on May 25 and off to construction documents, but used all the extra time this past month to get the bathroom right. Is this typical of the design process? It seems to be taking longer than anticipated, given the scope of work. I still don't think we are on to construction documents, and he indicated this could take another 3 weeks. Appreciate your thoughts on whether this experience is common.