We have almost completed remodeling a small bathroom in our 70 year old home. Used 2 inch hex honed bianco gregio (Carrara) marble for the floor. White vanity with Carrara top. White subway tub/shower surround. BM glass slipper (very light blue grey) walls. I'd add pictures, but I don't know how and no time to learn at the moment. All trim work is white. I love the look. Clean and airy. I chose Laticrete Silver Shadow grout for the floor. Marble and grout have been sealed. Non white grout, sealing, and the use of a ph neural cleaner should help with keeping the floor clean looking, hopefully. The use of the mini brick would also depend on the amount and type of use your bathroom has, and number & age of children in your family. Also, how frequently it will be cleaned and how well you like to clean. You may not want to be a slave to keeping it clean. IMO your choices for the bathroom are perfect. I agree with no wainscoting. We had similar reasoning-too sterile. Will the subway border on the floor be seen in most of the floor area or will it be hidden? If mostly hidden I'd forego the border. Why do we always 2nd guess ourselves? With me, it is just part of the process! Liz Here is a link that might be useful: Marble Floor

Hello everyone, I apologize for a delay in my response. Here is what happened, after getting very mixed votes, I kept going back and forth and back and forth and ended up going with the ones on the right :) I think some of you may have liked the ones on the left because of how they look in the picture but the ones on the right look really nice in life too. After leaving a sample for the tile guy to work with, I rushed to the store to get the other ones and of course got held up by other chores. Just got back and rushed to the PC to see the rest of the feedback I got :)) Thank you so much for your advice!! Here is how it looks so far:

Maybe you have stumped us! Or maybe we, at least, have nothing to add that will improve things... My problem is that currently I see a lovely, serene, gracious looking/feeling kitchen, but the plans make a new small kitchen without the same homey feel. I can see the challenges, though, of your current kitchen when I look at the floor plan. In the new plan I want to move the sink out of the traffic path to the dining room, but not sure where...Swapping the pantry and ovens? Maybe. I guess it's my only suggestion. Even where it is, it's better than having the range and sink in the path! The plan looks a little short on counter space, but when I study it, I think there is enough, and in the right places...So that's what counts.

I also tend to overlight rather than underlight. I think that it is the biggest change you can make to a room's ambience without hauling out a paintbrush. For general ambient lighting I like old-style 110 volt halogen or incandescent floodlights in recessed pots. You can get them for about @$20.00 each - it's really not worth buying the pricier ones because you don't seen them at all. 4/5/6" doesn't really make a huge difference, base the light size on the size of your room. I usually figure on 1 light covering a 6 or 7 foot radius. The focused pins and spotlights are great aesthetically but don't provide much usable light. That said, I use them all the time. You can find affordable 2 or 3" Xenon pucklights for about $20.00 each. Task lighting is eextremely important. Don't go without it. Looking quickly at your plan I would do 9 recessed lights in your family room - 3 rows of 3. I would also do a couple of pin spots - one on either side of your entertainment center. These should be directional. I would do a square of four in your dining room and a nice pendant fixture/chandelier in the center of it. In the kitchen I'd do 2 each in the breakfast area and the desk area, a row of 4 down the center of the room, 3 directional spots over the island and 4 directional spots over the counters. You will be kicking yourself if you spend a bunch of money on your reno and then find that you've made a room that is too dark to use comfortably. Put everything on dimmers, and on as many separate circuits as you can.