Tile & error?

After around two weeks of hard work, our tiler completed the wet areas.

That may sound like slow progress, but considering we have enough bathrooms to accommodate the population of Lichtenstein, I think that’s a decent rate of progress.

He did five bathrooms with floor to ceiling tiles in all, splash backs in the kitchen and gallery, laundry floor and splash back, and tiled all the external areas too (front porch, alfresco and first floor balcony. That’s a lot of work for one man!

To my untrained eye, the quality of his handy work was great. Nice straight lines with each tile lining up nicely to its neighbour to produce a smooth and even finish.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Rather unexpectedly, touring the completed bathrooms throughout the house left me feeling somewhat cold. Perhaps the consistency of his tiling coupled with the uniformity of our selections across all bathrooms resulted in so much visual stability that it lacked a focal point of interest.

We went with the same floor tile, wall tile and shower recess tile across all five bathrooms. I think the overwhelming range of choices at Di Lorenzo induced a state of instant selection fatigue. Our choice of uniformity was more because we were running low on creative energy, rather than being a creative choice.

I am unsure whether this uniformity is a good thing or a bad thing. Perhaps we should have been bolder and elected to do something a bit more daring in either the ground floor powder room that guests see, or our master ensuite that we get to enjoy daily. I suppose it’s too late now and we will have to live with the error of our ways, or the sagacity of our choices – time will tell which is truer.

One piece of empirical evidence in favour of uniformity is Eden Brae’s Waldorf display home. Like our home, the display home was put together under James Treble’s guidance. He elected to use the same tile throughout all five bathrooms in the display home, and now that I think about it, he did approve of our desire to simply use the same tile selection uniformly.

Another piece of James Treble advice was to use the floor tile up one wall of the bathroom to (1) elongate the space and (2) create a feature wall to create interest within the room. He also did this throughout the display home, and I think it looks great. Here’s hoping that the final result in our home is similarly successful!

• 

• 

•