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kendog2_gw

Please Help with Shower & Pebble Choices

kendog2
12 years ago

We could really use some help with a shower floor decision. The 18" tile we chose for our shower and bathroom floor doesn't have any trim pieces available. For the shower floor, we considered using another tile that is very similar but slightly lighter in color. I wasn't sure it would look right so we went with something completely different, a flat Rivera 4 color pebble. Now I'm having second thoughts about it. The small sample looked nice but after laying a few full sheets on the floor, the effect looks very busy and messy to me. On the wall above the first three tiles, we will be putting in a strip of staggered stone and glass liner, framed with a noche pencil rod. I'm afraid that the liner will look as thought it's competing with the multi-colored floor.

I don't like the way the pebble colors are so unevenly mixed. If we keep these, I would probably spend hours repositioning the stones to balance the colors. We're considering exchanging them for more a solid color in the same line called Terra Cotta. The Terra Cotta stones are the closest we could find to brown but some are a bit more reddish. We didn't choose them originally because we were afraid they would look too dark and too red. Now I'm wondering if they would complement the tile and liner better than the 4 color pebbles. We will be using a tan (Tumbleweed) grout that matches the tile. Will the light grout help break up the color of the dark pebbles? Maybe the 4 color pebble would also look okay after it's grouted? I would appreciate any opinions. Sorry the pictures are small. I resized them in Photobucket but it didn't seem to make any difference.

The Terra Cotta is the small piece of brown mosaic pebble.

I also have questions about finishing the edges of the shower. No matching bullnose is available. How would you tile experts manage the outside corners? We can't afford to have custom bullnose made. I read some other posts in which Bill stated that mitered corners can be sharp and chip easily so we probably won't go that route. What about overlapping the corners? Our (porcelain) tile looks almost the same color on the edges as on the face of the tile so I'm wondering if going this route would be acceptable or totally unprofessional looking.

On the sides where the tile ends in the middle of the wall, we need to cover the edges with something. I don't think a metal edge would look right. We're thinking of either covering the edges with the same pencil rod that we're using for the liner or with bullnose from another closely matching tile. Here are some pictures of the two tiles next to each other. (The tile that comes in bullnose is a little lighter and more matte than ours.)

Could we router the edges of the field tile ourselves to make bullnose? If we go with the pencil rod, should we order pieces in a color that matches the tile or use the same darker rod that is in the liner? Sorry for the long post and thank you in advance for any assistance.

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