Worry not, I am still alive. Indeed, this is certainly a record for the blog… It’s been well over a month since I posted an update, and for that I must apologize. I usually spent some time on the weekend to update the site, but lately my weekends have been spent running around handling errands for the house. Who would have thought building a house would get in the way of updating a blog about building a house. Shocking, I know.

A lot has happened since my previous post—the brickwork has been completed, trim has been installed, the kitchen has been installed, everything has been painted, etc.—but in the spirit of maintaing focus for each post, I’ll stick to a single topic today. Tiling.

All of our tile was purchased from Saltillo, with the exception of the floor tile in the master bathroom. The hexagon carrara marble (pictured above) was actually purchased months ago when we stumbled upon a 40% off sale at Ciot. At $11/sqft, that was still outside of our budget, but Jess had wanted that style from the beginning… and the steep discount made it a little easier to swallow. So purchase it we did. Beyond the hexagon mosaic floor, we went with a polished Fiorito stone for the shower walls and tub surround. The stone is primarily white, with some grey veining and a hint of brown. The grey matches mosaic floor and a single random-brick carrara inlay that wraps the shower wall at about 4”. The brown touches should really bring everything together as it’ll compliment the walnut vanity that’s being made for us.

We also went with a Nuheat radiant floor heating system… although, can someone explain why Nuheat thought they could use the Coda application icon and nobody would notice? For shame.

Ok, so we definitely splurged a little lot in the master bathroom… so we needed to simplify things just a bit in the shared bathroom. The floor is a white penny tile ($6.75/sqft), and the tub surround is a 4×12 white subway tile ($2.32/sqft). For a little additional character, we added a little single inlay of 1/4 polished bluestone bricks. Now, these suckers cost $17/sqft, but luckily we didn’t need many of them.

The main floor is primarily hardwood, but the foyer and powder room floor is a beautiful 16×24 filled/honed Travertino. We had considered a number of options but at $9/sqft, the Travertino was a steal in my opinion. It has a warm, cream colour and the complex veining gives it a lot of character.

In the basement, we had toyed with the idea of stained concrete, but in the ended decided to finish the laundry and mechanical rooms with a simple and inexpensive ($3.38/sqft) 12×24 ashgrey tile. It certainly looks better than stained concrete, although the size of the tile made sloping the floors a little difficult.

The basement bathroom has a similar style to the shared bathroom upstairs, with a 1×1 white hexagon mosaic for the floors and a 3×6 white bevelled subway tile for the tub surround. In retrospect though, I’m not sure we’d do the bevelled tile again—It looks great on the wall, but really messy in the corners. The bevel creates uneven gaps where we cut pieces, which are further exacerbated by the grey grout we used. Granted, it’ll be behind a shower curtain in a room that won’t get much use, so it’s not the end of the world.