Thanks all. We literally layed out all the tile last night. We layed out the insert also and glad we did. We discovered that it caused the first row of tile to be layed a certain way so that the staggered look could flow properly. We also decided to start the staggered look at the foyer, horizontal to the door. Where the foyer turns we will lay a decorative strip to divide where the two patterns meet. Then we will start the stagger at the garage door, also horizontal. When you stand at the T in the hall/foyer you can see the horizontal staggered pattern at both doorways. By having the stagger in hall be at the turn in foyer rather than ending at the T, it allows the hall to look bigger. Having the transitional decorative strip at the T seemed to chop the hall off too much. From way up on the stairs looking down at the tile, the strip looks good. The bath and laundry will now have a staggered look rather than a diamond angle. I will post pics when done. Magothyrivergirl- Hope you read my post in fireplaces about the paint issue I had with KozyHeat. It was a nightmare that at least got resolved. Considering a granite tile fell off wall onto the back of my head, resulting in several staples- ouch!- I was not pleased to come across this paint issue. But in the end it looks really nice. I will post pics of that once I get he floors all done.

When a general contractor prices a project he/she is using a combination of actual bid prices from sub-contractors, actual cost records from previous jobs, and some guessing if some part of the work is highly unusual. This price will also include all of the different contractors mark-ups for their overhead & profit. It can never represent the true cost of the job but the contractor hopes it will be greater rather than less than that amount. When an architect estimates the cost of a project he/she must use published industry cost data sources like RS Means with ballpark modification for the region, and some phone calls to material suppliers for price verification, and a wild guess for what the overhead costs and mark-ups of subcontractors and the general contractor will be even before they are selected. To do more than this would be cost prohibitive for the owner even if it were not beyond the expertise of the architect, which, of course, it is. When an architect attempts to design to a preliminary construction cost budget there is no simple cost estimation procedure that can be used for guidance and intuition would be useless. The only effective cost control procedure would be to stop at several design stages and perform a cost analysis based on a decreasing number of assumptions with the last analysis occurring at the time of bidding when the architect would have as much design information as the bidders and would have a chance to come as close as possible to predicting their prices. Such a procedure is usually considered to be cost prohibitive by an owner for a residence and the final analysis would be pointless since the actual bids would soon be available. So, to express disdain for discrepancies between actual bid prices from real contractors and the preliminary budget based on preliminary assumptions is disingenuous at best and, at worst terribly naive and disrespectful of the professional difficulty of such a task. No architect can design to a budget without the owner paying for a cost control procedure that parallels the design process and even that could not be expected to be completely accurate unless the overhead costs and markups of the contractors was known, or if it were performed by a professional cost estimator familiar with residential construction, if such people even exist. Your attitude is not unusual and I am sympathetic to it. Most of my residential clients express the same ideas and concerns and think they need to know the cost of a project before consulting an architect. This happened just last week and I had to explain that the design and contractor cost efforts should proceed on parallel tracks with some milestones for assessment and reevaluation along the way and that there was no point in walking contractors through the house before a preliminary drawing had been produced. Similarly, I have tried to tell you of a better, more cost effective way to proceed and why amateur advice will cause you to spin your wheels at a time you need some good traction to get the project started. My advice, simply put, is that if you are willing to hire a professional designer you should let them do their job rather than trying to do it for them. If that is offensive to you, then letÂs agree to both be offended and I will promise to restrict my advice to my clients who, in addition to not being offended, actually pay me for my time.

Rhome - I didn't spot this thread earlier, but will add my two cents. I'm a few years older (58) and also live in the PNW. We have tile floors in the bathrooms (heated) and tile at the front entry and mud room that is unheated. I'm thankful every day that we don't have unheated tile floors in the kitchen. Too hard and too cold. And it's the kind of cold that goes through a thick pair of socks unless they are wool. I tend not to wear shoes in the house, and those tile floors are a chilling surprise every time I stand on them for more than 15 seconds. We did pre-finished hardwood which is a bit more forgiving in a lot of ways. This is a beach house and we have a large dog who refuses to let anyone (including the vet techs) near her with nail clippers, plus wet and sand. We have oak that's kind of a busy grain in sort of a honey color. It hides just enough, and I don't sweat the patina it will get over the years. When it gets bad, we'll have it refinished.

That is what I was wondering. I wonder how many installers are doing this as opposed to just butting the ends up to the header piece? Also, the way the transition is set up I would have to put the header down first as I would not have enough room to put it in with the grove still attached. So then I am sliding the pieces in? In this scenario I would be routing a grove in to the length wise pieces, the header would have the tongue. Is it common place to rip down the header piece to take the grooved side off, or is it purely aesthetics as to how wide you want the header piece to be? Thanks a lot for your help