Upstate Update: Master Bath Progress

I went up to the house on Sunday for the first time in over two months (due to certain complications with our new contractor) and there was a lot to see -- almost all of it in the master bathroom.  So, in no particular order...

Remember this lovely vanity/counter/sink combo that I picked up at BIG NYC back in February 2012? Here it is sitting at BIG.

Well, after much back and forth about whether it would fit, it looks like it will finally have a home in our master bathroom!  So exciting!!!  I'm glad I don't have to help carry that massive marble slab up the stairs into the bathroom - it weighs an awful lot.

And look how nicely this tile border I devised for the master bath floor came out.

And here are some panoramae I assembled.  They look wonky, but that is just the panorama software.

UPSTATE UPDATE!! Hallelujah!!

I just received these photos of the master bath from our current (and fourth!) contractor:

Here it is! The first photo of our splendidly tiled shower in the master bath!

Here is a detail of that shampoo and soap cubby you see in the above photo...

... but what you couldn't see is that there is another cubby just for me!!  We have "hers" and "his" cubbies!!  Hooray!!

And here is the fixture wall waiting for some beautiful fixtures to go in.  Exciting!!

GOOD GOLLY!!! WE'RE CLASSY!!

Floor Score: Who you callin' Travertine?

Ever since Saturday I have been bumbling around in my head about the 170 Sq. Ft. of travertine "noce" or "noche" tiles I picked up at BIG on Saturday morning. They look like this (more or less). 

This photo above is the most accurate photo - the stone is mostly a greyish color but with brick red and a little green muddying it up.

These two are a little over-exposed - the tile is much darker than this (as shown in the photo above), but it gives you a better sense of the structure and design.

 

So, why have I been bumbling?  Well, a few reasons.  In no particular order:

• The look of the stone is a little "splashy" (Lou's word, but very apt).  I really like the grey and the movement, but it has greens and reds and looks a little like a tissue sample from something not healthy (although the same could be said of a lot of nice stone).  So, I'm not sure it is really the look for us.
• I did some reading online about travertine and it seems it is a very porous stone which does not wear as well as marble or granite and requires more care.  Plus, because it is very porous, in order for it to have a polished finish, it has to have been "filled" with some sort of polymer.  Anyway, whatever, it stopped seeming as glamorous.
• I googled prices on travertine noce/noche 12"x12" tile and, although the noce in the photos online did not look anything like the noce I had purchased, it all came up in the $3-5 @ s.f. range and suddenly my $1.75 @ s.f. didn't seem like such a bargain once you add in the truck and the continuing muscle pain in my lower back.  Yes, I am a bargain shopper and value apparently means as much to me as purely aesthetic issues: as the bargain-margin drops, so does the ease of overlooking the other above-mentioned issues.

MY CONCLUSION: We needed to hit re-set on our floor design process. I made an appointment for this morning at the stone yard a few blocks from our place just so that we could see everything and discuss what we would want if money were no obstacle.  V and I walked down there early for an appointment with Joan, the very nice stone lady, who spent 40 minutes showing us various options, all of which are gorgeous and most of which are out of our price range.  But we got a better sense of what we like: honed statuary, bianco gioia, calacatta gold honed, bardiglio, etc.  We like whites and greys.  We like movement. 

It was a useful exercise and the prices on some of the stuff we like is not prohibitive so we are awaiting an estimate.  

But there is more.  I carried a slice of the travertine noche with me and, at the end of our discussion of her offerings, I showed my "travertine" to Joan and she said, "That isn't travertine.  That's some type of marble."  And, wouldn't you know it, all of a sudden my heart opened up and I began to think, "well maybe I could live with this stuff."  

What is wrong with me? 

I'm still partial to big movement with swirling winds of gray so we are awaiting word from Joan on pricing for the stuff we liked most.  She is also going to get back to me on what type of marble my "noche" is.

[UPDATE: Subsequently found out that this is definitely marble and it is called "Montana".   And, to any reader (family member) who might think, "Wait! You mean this whole post about travertine was just rendered obsolete!", let me remind you that I still have 170 sq. ft. of this stuff in a shed and it will re-emerge someday. And nobody was ever worse off for knowing a little more about travertine.]

Stone Haul, or How I spent my Saturday

I rented a pickup truck at Home Depot on Friday night (Why Friday? Well, that was the only way to make sure I had it waiting for me on Saturday morning.).  Then on Saturday morning I picked up the truck right where I left it overnight in the Home Depot parking lot and I went and picked up my friend Lou In Wburg and we headed over to BIG NYC in Astoria Queens. There we picked up all that calacatta gold marble I bought last Saturday - approximately 900 pounds of it - along with 160 linear feet of lovely oak crown molding.  And, as long as I was at BIG with a lot of extra room in my truck, I decided to take a look at the rest of the stone they had for sale.  Just to be safe, I decided to buy 170 Sq. Ft. of 12"x12" travertine tiles.  They are a variety called "noce" or "noche".  Anyway, here are some photos.

The truck.  What a bargain! $75 for a full day with no mileage charge.  And it handled really nicely, even with a ton of stone in the bed.

On the right is the Calacatta Gold.  On the left are the styrofoam 10 packs of travertine noce.

Another shot of the travertine.

And here is friend Lou going above and beyond helping unload the stone.  Why does he always get stuck coming with me on the heavy days?  Just lucky for me, I guess.

Calacatta Gold - Stone Score

I spent about four hours at BIGNYC Astoria on Saturday and it seems to me now like my mission was a success.

First, I was hoping to find some additional stone tile for the master bath.  I had just picked up 90 s.f. of 4"x12" white carrara subway tile ($15@s.f.) at Classic Tile in Dyker Beach (or Dyker Heights or whatever).  So, I was feeling pretty bummed about the big ticket for the stone for the interior of our shower and figured I might be able to lower the cost of the shower if I found something nice and cheaper to do the lower part of the shower walls - maybe return four or five boxes.  Because, remember, we still have to buy the glass and have all this stuff installed.  Ugh!

So, what did I find?

Well, I ended up getting a ton (literally) of 3/4" thick Calacatta Gold marble, mostly in 1'x2' tiles but with a whole mess of various other size 3/4" strips.  I'll post photos of them later, but here is the basic look of Calacatta Gold:

I ended up with 29 full 1'x2' tiles (58 s.f.).  I got another dozen or so pieces measuring 6"x36" - i.e., 1.5 s.f. each (~18 s.f.).  And then there were a lot of 3"x48" boards (1 s.f. each) - maybe 16 of those (16 s.f.).  Anyway, I ended up with over 70 s.f. of this stuff.  It is pretty great looking, but impossibly heavy.
It is going to take me 2 or three trips to get it all up to the house because my suspension just can't take too much of it.

The second thing I was looking for was about 90 feet of flexible crown molding to cover the visible plate at the top of the wall on one side of the main room.  I ended up getting about 160 linear feet of really pretty oak moldings.  They definitely show some flex, but I don't know if it will be enough.  I certainly hope they can be bent to our curve.  We'll see. 
I will add photos of all the moldings in a subsequent post.

SCORE: Carrara Bianco Gioia Marble - INVENTORY

I stopped by BIGNYC first thing this morning to drop off some cans of paint and varnish and stuff and I saw they still had these 15 unopened boxes of 12"x12" white Carrara marble tiles which I spied last weekend. We still need flooring for the master bath upstate and V and I agreed last year that we would be fine going with white Carrara so it seemed like a good opportunity to get this procurement problem out of the way.  The price for the whole lot was right and I took them all. 150 Square feet. Done!
Anyway, the photos here are of the actual boxes but the picture of the marble itself is a stock photo from the web. We don't actually know how much movement or shading or spider webbing there might be on them. Won't know until we open all the boxes. I guess that is how it works when you buy natural stone - you get what you get. Fortunately they are all Gioia, meaning that they at all quarried from the same region in Messina, Italy. So at least we know they should have some consistency.
Hooray for BIG NYC.

DESIGN IDEA: Where the kitchen meets the living room

We have been so distracted by our expansion into the third floor that thoughts and plans for the round house have sort of fallen by the wayside.  But Spring is coming and I want to get thinking and working on it again.  To that end, this post got me really excited about what we can do with simple materials (looks like they stole their pix from a print magazine):

http://vosgesparis.blogspot.com/2012/07/industrial-white-home-designed-by-paola.html

Especially this pic:

There is NO WAY I am not stealing this idea for blending the marble kitchen tile floor into the plank flooring in the LR.  I want it!!!

Also, that dining table is just fantastic.  It might have a few too many legs for my under-table toe-stubbing pleasure, but it looks great.

This bathroom is awesome! Granted, they don't have to deal with the sloping round walls, but the mish-mash of materials works great.

I don't know if I want black shower walls (though they would be a nice tribute to the fire the house suffered that made it affordable), but everything else in this shower is pretty much perfect.