What Goes Up (My Walker Zanger Tiles)...Sometimes Must Come Down (Part 2)

 

 

Happy Friday world! It has been a great week and I am super excited to help one of my good friends ring in her 40th birthday tomorrow at an "all gals spa day"...brang it! I am also going to get to work A LOT this weekend, so a few hours of relaxation are going to be just what the doctor ordered. And speaking of spas, our bathroom has made some major steps towards being completed this week. The last time we visited the master bath there were some issues with the size of my beloved Walker Zanger Tile feature wall and alignment/centering of the travertine tile surround. So unfortunately, what went up, had to come down.  Here is a quick pic of the issues:

 

 

It is never fun having to go back and redo work because it wasn't done correct the first time.  But you are going to have setback in a renovation...and you gotta learn to roll with the punches. Fortunately, this issue only required one day of work to fix. The blue outline in this picture below shows my proposed changes to make the real life feature wall more closely resemble the size and layout of the feature wall that has been dancing with the sugar plumbs in my head for the past several months:

 

And here is what she looked like after undergoing her outpatient surgery:

  

Sooooooo much better! It is absolutely amazing how gaining a few inches of trim can have such a major impact (that's what she said...WaaWaaWaaaaaaaa). It's difficult to tell from the picture, but enlarging the area containing the Walker Zanger tiles makes the space feel so much larger and the ceiling taller! It basically had the exact same effect as when you add crown molding to a room...which causes your eyes to go up and out making the space appear bigger. So needless to say, I am thrilled with the result. If you are keeping tabs, that would be score #2 for "Speaking-Up-During-Construction/Renovation-When-There-Is-Something-That-You-Think-Is-Not-Right".  So let's take a another look at the oh so exciting Before and After shall we:

 

 

The next item on the To Do List was installation of our plumbing fixtures. We picked oil rubbed bronze fixtures to play off of the dark vanity that we installed. 

 

And can I say YUMMY!!!  This girl is in L-O-V-E, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!

 

The shower is made for two, so Matt and I each have our own shower head.  We also have four body sprays and an overhead gravity rain shower. I cannot wait to start my mornings belting out "Splish Splash I was taking a bath SHOWER!"...and believe you me, this will happen!  I just need to figure out how to work it into mine and Matt's Jungle Trilogy Mashup (a.k.a. Welcome to the Jungle, Jungle Boogie and the Lion Sleeps Tonight).  Witnessing this serenade is a real treat I tell ya! But I digress. The final step for the shower is the glass surround, which will be installed next week.  Oh, and I can't sign off today without giving a shout-out to my other love in the master bathroom - my claw foot tub and the cool telephone sprayer! Hello lovers!!! The color is a bit off in the picture due to a combination of bad lighting and my IPone camera that is on the fritz (after being dropped about 20 times)...so in person the various oil rubbed bronze colors are actually a lot closer in color.  It is all coming together! As of today we are officially:

 

 

until move-in! Woohoo!!! I hope that you enjoyed checking out the progress. Thank you all so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend! 

 

 

What Goes Up (My Walker Zanger Tiles)...Sometimes Must Come Down

Happy Thursday everyone! The weekend is almost here, so time to get ready for some fun! We are going to watch Bob Schneider tonight (he's one of our all time favorites!) and we have some birthday gatherings to attend this weekend...so it should be a busy, but fun one for us. I wanted to pop in real quick before the shenanigans start and give you an update on the master bathroom. As I mentioned in back in April, renovations do not always go as planned, and sometimes you can hit a bump in the road. So far our biggest bump was the H-U-G-E error that the builders, engineer and inspector made with the structural support for our house that could have caused the whole thing to come crashing down if any wind picked up...Eeek!!! Although that was more of a Mount Everest sized bump, we have had lots of other smaller bumps throughout this year-long renovation (some mountains and some mole hills). But we have somehow managed to either fix them or come up with work-around solutions...so my advise when doing a renovation, always try to stay nimble and look at those bumps as fun challenges to overcome instead of disasters that can ruin your day.  Our latest bump was the feature wall of Walker Zanger tile in our master bathroom shower. We were super excited to see it once it was installed, but when we got to the house, we realized the final product was not what we had envisioned.  Here's a picture of what it looked like installed with some notes highlighting the issues:

 

 

The first issue was that the area with the Walker Zanger Ashbury Tiles were too small (we'll call them the "Walker Zanger squares")...I love this tile, so wanted to have as much of it as possible on that wall.  Second, the field tile (which is the travertine tile) was not centered on the Walker Zanger squares.  I am totally "Type A" and saw this as soon as we walked in the room.  Although it might not seem like that big of a deal to some people, I knew this would drive me absolutely batty every time I saw it.  And the third issue is that the space between the two Walker Zanger squares is too wide. Although the Walker Zanger squares are centered above and below and the chair rail, this made the bottom Walker Zanger square feel too low and stubby.  But the good news of this pic is that our tub has arrived!  It hasn't been installed, so isn't in the correct location, but I am in L-O-V-E with this cast iron beauty! I don't know about you, but I think that claw foot tubs are super sexy, MEOW (see there is a silver lining to every storm cloud)!!!  But I digress, so here is a basic sketch of how we plan to fix the tile issue:

 

 

1. Widen the Walker Zanger squares by 2.5 tiles on each side

2. Make the top Walker Zanger square go all the way to the top tile

3. Make the space between the two sets of Walker Zanger squares smaller

4. Center the field tile (i.e., the travertine tile above and below the Walker Zanger squares)

 

So here we are today at the beginning of the "fixing stage" with the border tiles removed. Breaks my heart!!!

 

 

Oh well! The quicker we rip this band-aide off, the quicker we will be one step closer to finishing this project. Good times!!! So that's all for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Thursday!!!

 

 

 

 

Walker Zanger Ashbury Tile - Master Bathroom

Hi everyone!  Hope that you are having a great short week so far.  Only one more day till the July 4th holiday and long weekend starts. I cannot wait to celebrate! Yesterday, however, I received an early present that definitely helped to kick-off this week with a bang...our Walker Zanger Ashbury tiles FINALLY arrived after three long months on back order. But boy oh boy were these babies worth the wait...they are absolutely GORGEOUS! I am in L-O-V-E!!!

These little beauties are going to be installed on a feature wall in our master bathroom shower.  I love the Moroccan shape and the soft turquoise color will go great with our travertine tiles.  Here are some awesome inspiration pictures of how you can use these tiles.  First, they are phenomenal in a shower:

Here

And look amazing as a bathroom back splash:

Here

They look pretty sweet when used for a kitchen backslash too:

Here

 Or, if you don't want to use them for the entire back splash, they look great behind the stove and create a wonder feature wall:

Here

I absolutely cannot wait to see what they look like installed in the bathroom! Tile is supposed to start being installed this Friday, so hopefully I will have some picture updates for you next week.  Take care and have a great Tuesday! Thanks for stopping by!!!