Hall Bathroom. Revisited. Floor Time.

Where does the time go?  I swear....

It's the end of November (when I started this)?  (Now it's the end of January?!?)  (Now it's February?!  What the....)  Sheesh, jeez louise.  You'd never know I keep trying to sit the heck down to write....Sigh.

So that tub surround tiling!  It's done.  Thank goodness.  Right?  Whew.  It's done.  It's not perfect but what can I say.  It's done.  Butt. Wiggle. Dance.

In its just finished state.  Woot!  So happy with the tile, such a huge difference.

Not gonna lie, I'm now half tempted to take the tile to the ceiling to negate some of my not-perfectness but then I think about what I had to do to cut the tiles aaaand that thought gets scuttled.

Temporarily.

So the floor.  The floor.  Can't leave the floor looking like poop with all these spiffy changes around it.

The plan was, heh, the plan for the floor was to use some of the tile I had purchased oh like eons ago.  Back in 2013 after we bought the house.  Yes, boxes of tile have been sitting around collecting dust allll this time.

Ahem.

The disaster area, aka "floor," before, as is from day of home purchase.  Oy.

Way back when, I purchased four boxes of Imola Ceramica Antares Nickel and three boxes of Antares Copper from Floor & Decor.

Becaaauuuse, well, I had planned to use the copper for the first floor bathroom (the nickel in the master bath with the floor plan as-is) but that scheme, vvvrrttt, poof, went out the window when the wallpaper came into play.  Sorry, when the Craigslist tile came into play, duh!

So, as Mike was on a let's-use-up-whatcha-got kick as I clearly have a very robust tile habit, and hey, who can blame him, let's use this stuff already dammit, I thought I'd use one or the other for the hall bathroom floor.

Heh, this thought process occurred well before running head-on into the whole tile cutting thing, cutting large format tile dilemma thing, rearing its ugly head around these parts.

Eventually I decided to use the nickel color for the hall bathroom floor.  My calculations stated I was one box short, I only have three boxes, I thought to myself (wait for it).  Omg.  Wtf am I gonna do.  I bought that freakin' tile over four years ago.  It is long long long long gone.

I panicked of course, naturally.  For a moment.  Then I collected myself and started searching and searching, emailing companies, places, people, searching searching searching.  This search went on and on and on.  For eons.  Yes.  It was borderline obsessive.

So it was looking pretty dire all right.  I started thinking of ways to use the tile and what I could fill in with, ya know, like a border or mix something else in.  Ya know, so as to not buy a whole bathroom floor's worth of new tile.

I shopped online, I hit up Floor & Decor.  I...I, I mean, what didn't I do.

Visually in my head I couldn't work it out though, nothing looked right.

Short on photos for this post so you get dogs, boo hoo.  Finn says, "uuuh.  What?  I'm chillin'."  Such a weirdo, what a weird sitter.

Finally I hit upon a place in Texas or Tennessee who had something called nickel under a different brand name, MS International, so I emailed asking if there was a distributor here in Illinois.  They kindly replied:  Century Tile.  Contacted them, yes we've got it, come out to Bloomingdale (omg, that's like three+ hours round trip)...

Before I trek out, I said, can you verify something about the tile first?  He never got back to me.  So I never went.

In the meantime I ordered up a sample of MS International's Saturn Coal from Build Direct.*  I had previously ordered a sample from Wayfair called Nickel* but it was too metallic blue, not metallic nickel silvery, no way did it match so I tossed it.  Hence this ordering.

I know, I know, it gets maddening-ly crazy stupid confusing between the names of the tiles and the brands and what they each look like.  This was part of my loopy frustrations and what was making me tweaky.

Tweak.  From South Park.  Me.

Lots of sites, folks, places use the names interchangeably, hence why I asked the Bloomingdale guy to verify, ordering a different sample....blah blah you get the gist.

Sample arrives and huh.  It seems like, does it?, is it like...?  Hm.  Well, perhaps it's close enough and I can use them along the wood lath wall where no one will notice a difference, or mix them in somehow.  Crisis averted?

I imagine this Saturn Coal is what they had out in west in the boonies; I'm glad I didn't haul my butt out there.  Because...

Home Depot* has had these Saturn Coal tiles forever.  Order one box from Home Depot.  Pick up said box from Home Depot.

Noooooo.  What does that box say??!

Holy freakin' crap.  Nooo sh*t.

Despite Home Depot's website saying the tiles are by MS, the box says Imola, the original brand I purchased.  I nearly pooped my pants.  All that time and stress and heartache wasted?  I coulda just ordered a box forever ago?

Hauled that monstrously heavy box of four 20x20 tiles upstairs, let the cardboard casually fall away and it's!....not the same.  It's blue metallic.  Ahhh dammit.  Ok.

It is in fact very pretty though, the metallic blue sheen.

I spent the next few days, weeks?, shifting tiles around on the floor, head tilting, mixing tiles around, laying out patterns, head tilt the other direction.  That's when I had a different thought and gave up on tiling all together.  Plus I was rip roarin' tired of tile.  Oddly.  That doesn't last long apparently though.

So ya know what?  In the end I said F it man, let's stencil this bitch.  Yes, that's right, with paint and a stencil and crawling around the bathroom floor.  'Cuz gee whiz, that sounds like a much less taxing option!

Sweet pea Hailey.  I miss her so.

Guess what I found not too much later though?  That fourth box of nickel tile.  I had enough.  All that drama and stress for nothin'.

hahahahaaaa..aahhhhhhhh......head to wall.

Stay tuned!

*The Saturn Coal tile sample link from Wayfair, the Saturn Coal tile from Home Depot, and the Build Direct links are affiliate links.  Mwah, thanks!  Please see the "boring stuff" tab for more info.