The Gibbons House: Tiles and Tribulations

Wednesday, I finally placed the order for our bamboo flooring. Right after the posting on March 22, I found out that we would be faced with additional installation costs. Because hardwood needs to be either glued or nailed, it involves extra labor costs of $3.00-$5.00 per square foot. That put us over budget so we started at square one and began looking into click-lock floors instead. We came to the same conclusion the second time: while we could find great bamboo click-lock floors, they only came in a light, natural shade. CaliBamboo made several dark, high quality, click-lock floors but they were $10.50/sq.ft. After a lot of back-and-forth and (Sam claims) talking in my sleep about floor samples, we went with our original choice, Ambient Chocolate Strand Woven Bamboo:

I felt better immediately so I am confident that we made the right decision. The last thing I want is to stress over what shoes guests are wearing in the house or be afraid to drop or move anything on the floor. There is nothing in the house that will be used more than the floor...our families helped to convince us of that last weekend in Ohio.

With that behind us, we need to move on to bathroom tile. Here are some samples that we ordered from modwalls to get an idea for sizes and colors that we might like.

The only tile I was 100% sure that I wanted in the house is Metro Hex White with Black Dot porcelain mosaic tile from Home Depot. We ordered it this afternoon to use in the first floor half-bath.

I anticipate the other baths being much more difficult because we'll need to coordinate the floor and the shower tile ...I can see some restless nights and sleep talking ahead.

This week, we are hoping to have the stairs fabricated and installed. The inspector will not go upstairs to check things out until we have real steps. Hope to have some pictures soon.