Picking Tile Colors (Day 426)

Back in mid December, after seeing Santa Baby in Seattle with the Murphys, Nancy and I spent the next day looking at tile for the house. We need floor tile for the kitchen, mudroom, guest bath, master bath, and (later) for the upstairs bathroom. We also need wall tile for the showers and upstairs bath (later), and back splash tile for the master bath vanity and kitchen. Picking out tile (for at least me) is just slightly more pleasant than jambing a toothpick beneath your fingernail. It can also lead to divorce court or a session with Judge Judy. You get the point.

We came back with a half dozen samples of rather boring, utilitarian tile that wasn't even affordable ($10-30/sq.ft). So for 3 weeks, we've ignored the looming problem. However, we're at a point where the tile needs to go down. The trim on a half dozen doors can't be nailed up until the tile is laid, so that's holding up some paint and lacquer work. Luckily, a design angel came to our aid—True Heart, a local artist and current home builder with her husband Dennis McDaniels. We'd met them several years ago on the PT Art Studio Tour, then became friends as we shared stories about building our houses. I put them onto Brian Van Dalsam, who is working more for them now than for us (they have hundreds of board feet of trim lumber to sand, stain, and finish—yikes). Anyway, I digress.

True offered to help us, really Nancy, pick out tile colors. I'm outta the loop on this one since I can't pick out a tie to go with pants and a shirt. She said it would be easy once we decided on the core colors, then narrowed our choices down to tiles that pull those colors in. The basic idea that we failed to grasp was that we need to build an integrated palette of colors for the house based on several key colors and/or themes. For example, she said that the greens in the counter top ought to get picked up in the walls and tile, if possible. The long kitchen wall was easy since American clay had two colors that went with the lighter green veins in the counter top. The floor tile was harder, but success was on the horizon. Yesterday, True and Nancy went off to Sequim to a tile supplier (Blake Sand and Gravel) to look at samples, plus shop at Costco and look in on the counter tops which were being fabricated by Richerts in Carlsborg (just west of Sequim).

Well, in a matter of several hours they'd found a line of porcelain tile that had variegated colors with some hints of red (the kitchen cabinets) and greens (the counter tops and clay plaster walls to be). Voilà. She brought home some samples and I liked them all. We've joked with True that we'll trade meals for design ideas, so it looks like the new kitchen will get well used and soon. In fact, we made a down payment by having them to dinner last weekend. The tile samples have to go back on Saturday, so we'll pick out the floor tile and put an order in. Looks like we'll be laying about 500 sq. ft of tile by the end of the month.