Tile and Brick Selections

More shopping! We've started looking at tile and flooring options, and we’ve decided on a brick for the exterior of our home.

When we were looking at brick options, the supplier was able to give us addresses of homes or businesses that have put that brick up so we could see it in a real life application. We did some driving around to see what we would like best and finally decided on a Glen-Gery brand brick. The color is Carbon Black, and we will have it put up with a dark mortar so it will end up looking like this:

Something else we’ve been working on is picking out flooring and tile for the home. We want to put luxury vinyl planks (LVP) throughout the home with tile for the bathroom floors, showers, and kitchen backsplash. The only tile we knew we wanted was a neutral terrazzo style tile for the primary bathroom floor. Everything else we would just have to find inspiration for while shopping. We have gone to several different tile shops in our area as well as browsed online tile shops. We have photos of samples we like from stores we have been in, and we have samples from the online shop we looked at (TileBar). While we are not set on a specific LVP or any specific tiles, we have finally gathered some vision for our spaces and have found a direction to head in.

Here’s what we are thinking right now:

In the primary bathroom, we like this terrazzo-look tile for the floor. We also want to tile on the wall behind the tub, and we are thinking of something like this light green rectangle tile that would be laid in a straight herringbone pattern. We also found this nice wood-look large format tile and think it will look great on the walls and floor of the shower. We will need to talk to the tile installer for our home to make sure he can lay the large format tile on the shower floor. It can be difficult to do because you need to create a pitch in the floor so water can drain properly. This is why people generally choose a smaller or mosaic tile for the shower floor.

We like this matte blue rectangle tile for the kitchen backsplash. This one we would want to lay vertically stacked. We are also thinking of wrapping our hood insert in drywall so we can carry the backsplash tile over the hood as well.

In the powder room we want to have something fun. We had large hexagon tiles in our last house and still love that style. So we found these pretty, blue hexagon tiles and thought they would look very nice on the floor in the powder room.

On to the extra bathrooms. The two extra bedroom bathrooms will be the same. We are looking for a concrete-look tile for the floors in these bathrooms. We’ll put some options we are looking at below. Then we just need a tile for the shower walls. We want to keep things neutral here, so we found this fun, white, fluted tile for the shower walls. It’s hard to see in the photos, but it’s basically a wavy texture on the tile. So it adds some fun detail while still keeping to a neutral palette.

Then for the game room bathroom we want to keep the same concrete-look tile from the other bathrooms. We want to add a fun pop in here as well like the powder room. So we are thinking we will carry the concrete-look tile onto the shower floor and then find a fun tile for the shower walls. We found some terracotta color tiles and loved how that looked with the concrete look. Another option we found is this pretty fish scale tile, also in a terracotta color.

Lastly, LVP. We’re looking for a wood-tone similar to the floors in our last house. We still love those floors, but they were engineered hardwood, so we have to see if we can find a similar style in LVP. Here are some options we have liked so far, but we haven’t landed on a single option yet.

This is where the decisions start to get more difficult. We want to make sure we can achieve a light and clean look on the inside while still alluding to the mid-century modern style of the home. We’ll start to settle on some options soon once we can work out pricing. Until then, it’s fun to dream and shop!

PS–just in case you’re wondering about any of the patterns mentioned, check out this website detailing some tile patterns: https://abeautifulmess.com/subway-tile-designs-inspiration/