The Tile Drama

If I were to ask you how much tile was in your bathroom, would you know? Would you know what color is it? How much square footage you have, how much bullnose you have (what bullnose is), or if there are "accent" tiles anywhere? I feel like once this is all said and done, I will.

It all started when I was at the house the last weekend dropping off the vanity I drove 45 miles to get from a Home Depot that had it in stock. The exorbitant amount of shipping and handling ($139 for a $240 vanity) motivated me to find one locally and go get it. I called ahead, and he said there was ONE on the shelf, and he'd put my name on it. When we got there, there was a home depot piece of paper that said ROB. I was pleased. Anywho, this does relate, I promise. We brought the vanity back from Santa Clara, Sandra helped me load it into the house. Excited, I took out the counter top to see how it'd look in the bathroom. Then, I realized that there was no splash guard! First, I thought it'd be fine; we could find some 36" x 3" splash guard from Home Depot, or get some granite to put behind it. To be safe, I asked the contractor. His response - the wall tiles will cover it, and it'd be fine without a splash guard. My reaction - what wall tiles?!?

Apparently, to properly water proof the walls and such, I need about 4 feet of wall tiles to go around the uncovered walls. Luckily, it's only 13 feet (55 square feet). I pretty much knew what I wanted to do immediately - all white with a brick pattern!

Tuesday, we made a trip to Home Depot. I laid out all the tiles on the floor in the pattern I liked - 3' of 6"x8", 1' of 3"x6", and the bullnose, I don't know. Sandra grabbed a patterned one that was kind of molded and shaped. It looked good. I figured I'd let the idea marinate and return to it on the weekend.

I tell my co-worker about how I had to now choose tiles, and she had the same thought I did - all white "subway" tiles! Now I knew it'd be fine!

Friday, we go price comparing with a few of the tile shops on Bayshore. They didn't have all the tiles I wanted to complete the pattern, and the glossy white tiles in 3x6 were a dollar or more over the price at Home Depot! We ended the night deciding to go to Home Depot on Saturday to buy everything...

Saturday rolls around, and we get to Home Depot. This was a long trip. I laid out the tiles on the long bed cart in the pattern I thought would look good. I ended up using a 1/4" x 6" all brown band between the 3"x6" and the 2"x6" bullnose. It looked good. After a little debate about 1' of 3x6 vs 6" of 3x6, we went with the 6". (Sandra changed her mind later to agree with the 1'.)

With a small degree of difficulty, we calculated how many boxes of each we need, and pulled out the necessary boxes of each tile. As I started to put the tiles that I laid down away, I noticed something - the finish on the 6x8 was different from the finish on the 3x6!!! It was a pretty huge difference, too! One had a flat finish while the other was really glossy! Why would they only stock the 6x8's like that?! It wasn't like this on Tuesday, was it? We found the glossy white 6x8 tiles, and the SKU number was the same as the flat white tile! To make matters worse, we couldn't find the difference on the boxes! I started asking around to a few Home Depot employees, and they couldn't figure it out. Sandra, who stayed in the aisle, found that the glossy tiles had a square cut out on the top corner of the box! The Home Depot employee helping us (Dennis), reached deep into the shelves and pulled out the 4 boxes of glossy white tiles that we needed! Apparently, the lack of distinction was pretty major. Dennis called someone in management over, and she was studying the tiles and making notes. Later, we found a few Home Depot employees over by the tiles deep in discussion about the glossy vs flat white 6x8 tiles!

We finally got all the tiles, though. Hopefully it's enough!