At Home: Marble Floor Mapping

I finally purchased the flooring for my bathroom renovation. I chose to go with marble tile. A close contender was tile that has the look of wood flooring. A lot of the pins on my Bathroom board on Pinterest have marble floor. I just love the classic, sophisticated look. It's timeless. I've always wanted marble flooring, so I said, just do it!

Here are some of my favorite pins from my bathroom board:

(source)

(source)

(source)

Marble is definitely not the cheapest tile around. I explored big box stores, websites like overstock.com, amazon.com and wayfair.com, and local tile shops. It was really hard to justify spending $7+ on one square foot of tile.

Ultimately, I chose to go the big box store route, Home Depot. I purchased 12 cases (5 sq. ft/case) of these greecian polished marble tiles for $3.99/sq. ft. I needed a minimum of 45 sq. ft. but got extra should there have been significant variations in pattern. I'm glad I got more than I needed as it allowed me to be really picky about which tiles I chose.

There's a tag that says "Made in China" so, I hate to be so gullible to believe that these are real marble tile--or perhaps they are real marble but were cut and polished in China?! I'm not sure. You get what you pay for I suppose. Anyways, before I start to regret this decision, I'll continue....

So, as the post title reads, I placed each and every tile out on the floor of my spare room to get an idea of what I was working with. I thought I got a pretty good bunch, many with nice veining. I eliminated all the tile that I did not like (super spotty or too plain) or that looked like they were cracked (including on the back of the tile).

I organized the tiles into my first choice (red tag), second choice (blue tag), and third choice (no tag). Then I started moving the tiles into the bathroom to figure out where I wanted each tile to be placed. Because there are variations in the depth of gray and veining in each of the tiles, I wanted to be sure they were evenly distributed.

 

Once I determined the layout of the tile I put together a very official floor map on a post-it note. It's a bit too official to share online (or the picture just refused to upload).

I labeled the tiles by number from left to right, bottom to the top, for those that will be most visible in the room and then labeled a column by letter (those that are against the wall and behind the vanity and toilet; column on the right of picture below). Then I placed each tile back into the spare room using the numerical grid. This also allowed me to take another look at tile placement and rearrange if necessary.

I also put together a few tiles for the linen closet that is located behind the bathroom door.

It didn't really take all that long to lay everything out, sort and label, lay out again, label again, and lay out once more into a final configuration. I figure it will be much easier to have a tile pattern established on installation day rather than moving tiles around when wet cement is involved.

I ended up returning two boxes of tile (ten tiles total).

Super excited to have the tile ready to go. I also have a lovely new American Standard WaterSense certified toilet chillin' in the back of my car. Good times. The bathroom vanity I purchased is still at my parents house. Now I am in the process of pricing out tile for the shower and deciding whether or not to keep the white 4x4 tile that currently is in there and cutting out a small section for a mosaic inlay. Sort of like this:

(source)

Now I shall wait for my dad to free up a weekend so the bathroom renovation can begin. I'm hoping I can remain patient though, because removing tile doesn't seem that difficult to do on my own.....

Stay tuned!

-Kristin