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Flooring Bathrooms

Large format floor tile in 1920s bathroom?

last year

We’re renovating our kids’/guest bath in our 1920s colonial rowhouse. I would love to do a traditional penny or hex tile on the floor, but I’m concerned about the upkeep with two small kids. I’ve seen what they’ve done to the penny tile on the floor of our main floor powder room! Any suggestions for a larger format tile in keeping with the style and era of the house? Thanks!

Comments (3)

millworkman
last year
"Any suggestions for a larger format tile in keeping with the style and era of the house?"

Pictures of the interior of the home? Help us help you, not all 1920's colonial rowhouses are styles the same.
roarah
last year
My 1920s hoyse has orginal hex floor tiles a hundred year old hall bath with many children using it as their primary bath all that time looks great. The reason is the mud grout was always darker than the tile. Go with small hex tiles just use darker grout.
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I faced a similar situation after opening up the ceiling of my 1940's bathroom, on ceiling joist was cut all the way through to allow room for a lead bend. Unfortunately, sistering wasn't really a choice since there was very little clearance. After thinking about it for awhile, I decided to use some 1/4" thick steel angle iron. I bolted a four foot length to either side of the cut joist. I did this at the top of the joist (just below the floor above) and the bottom (just above the bath room ceiling). I drilled 3/8" in the steel/wood every 8 inches and used a piece of threaded rod and some bolts and lock washers. I torqued the sh!t out of everything and it all seems pretty good. I figure if the cut's been there for 60 years and there's no deflection in either end of the cut joist, there must not be too much of a load on that area and some steel is better than nothing.
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I just priced out the cost of the Standard colored fixtures in my house at about $1300 in 1931. Those prices do include the faucets and the drain fittings but that's still a tremendous amount of money, comparable to the cost of a top of the line Ford Model A. I have always known the fixtures were expensive, but didn't realize just how very pricey. The original building permit for the home was for a construction cost of $15,000 and that would put the plumbing fixtures at almost 10% of the complete cost
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Thanks! I guess the footprint of the room is a big factor. I want to make the most “timeless” choice; something that won’t feel dated in a few years. I really like the look of large square diagonal marble (or marble-look porcelain) tile floors — especially with the white, clean, open, airy feel I’m going for. But lately I’ve seen some longer rectangular porcelain planks that look nice too (I wouldn’t do wood-look, personally, for our project). Our current bathroom has white 12x12 diagonal floor tiles and it looks pretty decent as-is — but maybe we should make a bigger change than just new, larger light-colored square diagonal tiles.
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We are also doing two bathroom remodels. Our tile installer is telling us that large tiles are the rage right now, however our master bath will be a wet room. I am very hesitant to put large tiles on the floor thinking that they could be very slippery. On the other hand, I really don't want to deal with discoloring of grout as time goes on. Now my mother installed lots of tile in the 80s and and the grout became very discolored. I am suspecting grout has come a LONG was since then. I have read about epoxy and urethane grout. Does anyone have suggestions for a bathroom wet room? Thanks so much for your opinions in advance!
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artemis78
last year
We did 2" hex on a new bath in our 1915 house--the original bathroom in the house had 1" hex when built (though right now has 12x12 beige tiles circa mid-1990s) so that seemed like a good compromise to be a nod to the history of the house while involving a little less grout. I do plan to use either 1" hex or 1" square tiles when we finally get around to replacing the floor in our existing bath, though, even though it will soon be used primarily by two kids. They aren't particularly hard on the floor except for an area that chronically has toothpaste stains on it because it's under the toothbrush holder. But that cleans up easily, and we're solving that one by getting a new console sink that will extend under it and have a little bit of counter, so it will drip there instead. If you use a good grout that's not white, I don't think you'll have big issues with the upkeep.

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