My subway tile looks weird, builder disagrees. Opnions?
Calie Moore
5 months ago
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millworkman
5 months agoaem04
5 months agoRelated Discussions
Subway tile border/design questions - ideas please!
Comments (29)casa1 -- the marble is 1" and the borders 1/2", yes. It's not my bath it belongs to a friend of mine. She has a teenage boy, now college age. No complaints. Hard to comment about marble and high usage with small children. I have a friend who's an antique dealer with good furniture all over the house and small kids and it's no issue at all. Others wouldn't think of it IYKWIM. I have a marble bath and it cleans up really easily with hot water. Ironically, I've had tiny bits of mildew on the grout and used a clorox bleach pen to get it off. No etching I can see when it was rinsed. Some people talk about etching and think marble isn't practical. I disagree but I love the way marble looks as it ages. If you want something that will stay new looking and be bulletproof then I'd investigate ceramic tile mosaic. With enough research I'm sure you could get the same look with ceramic tile and that should cost considerably less than marble....See MoreOld House, Weird Walls: what to do?
Comments (17)What others are saying is correct--the breaker panel MUST be easily accessible. I advise against putting them in a closet--a lot of builders like to do that to hide the "ugly" box, but home inspectors and fire marshals hate it. It looks like the panel cover is one designed for boxes that stand out in the open, not recessed in the wall. If you look up the brand and model, you may be able to get a new cover, one designed for recessed installation (Instead of looking like a box lid, the edges go straight out to sit flush with the wall surface and cover the gap in the wall around the sides of the box.) If that's a fuse box, not a breaker panel, I highly recommend replacing it. If your jurisdiction permits it, and you can shut off power to it, you can replace it yourself easily for less than $200, including new breakers and a new panel. If you feel up to it ;) You can find numerous sources on the Internet to walk you through replacing a panel and making sure it's safe and up to code (which most older panels are not) As for the hump in the wall, I agree that you should try drilling into it to see what's behind it. It may be raceway for your electrical wiring--it's possible that your wall is cinder block or brick about halfway up, with wood framing on top....See More"Consistency" vs. "Builder repetitive"
Comments (114)amberm145: You mentioned that you'd like larger format tiles on your bathroom floor and a matching mosaic for the shower. We have 13" square travertine-style tile on our master bath floor, and the installer cut those same tiles down to 3.5" squares for the shower stall. So that may be something for you to consider. I've really enjoyed reading through this thread and all the differing points of view. I wish I'd known more about design and architecture than I did when we had our house built (in a "American Foursquare" 1920's style with Craftsman elements) 10 years ago, but we researched as much as we could at the time and are still learning. I used to beat myself up more for all the mistakes I felt we'd made, but now I try (and mostly succeed) to focus more on what I think we did right. I'm too practical to completely redo things that still function just fine, but I think about how I might re-do some of the things that still bug me over time. Some of you purists would shudder at the variety in finishes throughout our house (we did all pedestal sinks in the 3 baths, but different hardware finishes in each, for example). I have plenty of regrets I could fixate on in our house, but mixing hardware finishes isn't one of them. For us, having many things in an unfinished state (for example, our living room table/chairs were recently re-glued/refinished but the chair seats need to be reupholstered before we can actually USE them) is mainly due to my indecisiveness rather than a lack of finances to get projects done... I tend to over think things to the point of the ridiculous and drive even myself crazy sometimes, and I also feel like if it's something I can do myself (painting, window treatments, etc.), then I should. So everything takes time, and with young kids that's often a scarce resource. I've thought about asking for design advice from a professional, and will if we ever re-do our kitchen cabinets (my main regret after our build), but for now I'm trying to learn on my own here and from old house mags and such. I also come from a working class background and have lived in areas of poverty (including a mud hut in a 3rd world country), so the whole concept of design feels sort of indulgent and I guess it makes me feel guilty sometimes to even care about such things... But I do....See Morewhite ceramic subway tile w/ marble in master bath: can this work?
Comments (31)Flo, thanks so much. I just got home from the tile shop. I like the basket weave with the black dot (not the dark grey I was considering) and the guy I’ve been working with at the shop suggested just buying field tile that matches the dot and use that as the liner on the rug (cut into 1/2” strips). His thought on the wall is to either use that same liner, to match the dot, or skip it. I’m leaning towards skipping it and letting the floor be the focal point. Do you still think this a tough tiling job? Is it the basket weave or herringbone subway or ...all of it together?. I imagined that the wainscoting would be easy. To answer your question, no I don’t dye my hair at home, but thanks for the heads up....See Morekculbers
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