Bathroom tile warm-up

Bill had to go back to work today, so I've been sending him pictures of the bathroom to keep him excited for an evening of tiling tonight. TILE! TILE! Perhaps you'd like to see some photos too?

I was in charge of removing all the linoleum on the floor. Grrr. But done:

I also sanded some plaster which made my hair white. This photo was meant to tease Bill with how beautiful I'm looking today with the dusk mask, ear thingies (we just call them "ears" as in "do you have your ears on?"...but they must have a real name?), and dust that I can't shower off.

Our floor tiles are Travertine 6 x 18 subway tiles which will be offset by 1/3 because it looks balanced and will result in the least amount of cutting. Coopworth approves. (Actually, he just wants lunch.)

I cut some waterproof floor stuff. Note the holes for the toilet and water pipes. That's some fancy utility knife action there, my friends.

The shower walls are porcelain. I would have loved real stone for the shower, but the Bathroom Remodel Fairy didn't leave enough of a budget under our pillows. The shower is 2 2/3 tiles wide, so I think we're going to offset the rows like this:

We also have a wee accent stripe of white stone that will go somewhere. The tile man sold us "pencil" tiles (rounded sticky-out things) to put on the top and bottom of the accent to frame it and camouflage any difference in width between the accent and the porcelain. I'm not loving them and hopeful we can do something more artistic instead. They seem very serious and proper to me and that makes me sad and rebellious.

To balance out the straightness of the serious square shower tiles, we got Travertine cobblestones for the shower floor. They feel more earthy and natural - and therefore more happy-making - to me. I have the main bits laid out and there are lots of free-standing stones to fill in the gaps. We'll be sticking them down tonight!