Oh no no no to undies on the heated rack!!! Who wants crunchy, baked undies?! They need to be dried without any heat. At least in my house.
Ok so I have another update!
I think the tile salesperson accidentally sent the quote to me rather than the designer. Sigh. With the “moderate” floor option, the tile comes to $8000. (…!!!). I forwarded it to the designer.
The closet and bathroom together are about 14x14. Within that space are two separate sinks, a water closet, shower stall and tub. The closet floor will also be tiled, so the master bath and closet are coordinated. I think I’m giving up the feature wall in the water closet!
Our favorite floor tiles are $2000 (moderate?) and $3000 (incredible). For the most part, the wall tiles are $22-$23 and the feature mosaic $35 per square foot.
So, it’s time for prices on similar, but less expensive, handmade wall tile. The other options include Walker Zanger Cafe (we have a good price for the kitchen backsplash and may choose another color for the bathroom). We also line a line called WOW that has beautiful handmade tiles. Shall I post links?
The allowances on the contract were $2000-$3000. I cant see how we won’t blow this line.
Yes, links please. 
Boy, that’s some expensive tile!! But I do admit that hand made tiles are gorgeous. They are perfect in the kitchen. Remember that not too many people are in your master bath admiring your tile:). Make sure after going to all this time and expense for what sounds like a gorgeous remodel, that you minimize your grout lines for cleanup reasons and ALL grout has to be the stain proof epoxy type grout. Tile guys hate to use it and it costs more. Just to make sure it is used, get it at the tile store yourself. Don’t let the tile guy buy the grout.
@notrichenough
Add a base filler piece (or upper wall filler that is at least 36” long by 3” wide) to your kitchen cabinet order. Have the install guys use it to fill in the gap over a standard refrigerator. Looks custom and you can get a std frig. I’ve never figured out who buys those expensive refrigerators with internet displays and TVs. Just more things to beep at you and eventually break.
" Have the install guys use it to fill in the gap over a standard refrigerator."
Yup. Or buy some false drawer clips and just clip it into place yourself (this is what we did).
Tile:
This is the least expensive.
http://www.walkerzanger.com/collections/products.php?view=mat&mat=Ceramic%20and%20Terracotta&coll=Café
This may be the second least expensive. In this PDF, I especially like the tile near page 20.
http://www.wowdesigneu.com/downloads/catalogos/catalogoCrafted.pdf
This is the feature mosaic, tiny brick cut.
https://sonomatilemakers.com/product/vihara-1x4/?attribute_pa_vh-1x4-color-palette=puka-sk-1x4
There’s one more Mexican tile called Mexican Handcrafted Tile Suprema Brick, Carrera Gray Suprema, but I can’t find a good picture.
This is the very expensive marble floor. Price quoted to us is about $10 less than the price shown.
https://tangotile.com/timeworn-spina-pesce-marble-mosaic-in-bianco-antico.html#.WuPaWoopChA
Yeah, I ordered a bunch of filler pieces, six 42"x3" and one 96"x3".
One thing I read somewhere, which concerns me a little, is that a standard 69" fridge needs the gap for proper air circulation or it doesn’t work right. The 72" ones are engineered differently to not need the gap, which may partially explain why they are so much more expensive.
Funny story about the cabinets:
I’ve already ordered and received the cabinets, the cabinet place was having a 20% off sale so I jumped the gun a bit and bought them. These are RTA (Ready To Assemble), which means at some point I will spend a day putting them together.
They arrived on a truck looking like this. It’s all the white boxes:
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/photos/32532343@N00/41031189324/in/dateposted-public/
Holy crap…
Notice the pallet with 1200 pounds of cabinets stacked directly on top of one of the cabinets. This is that box after I unstacked everything:
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/photos/32532343@N00/41031189974/in/dateposted-public/
I thought for sure they had destroyed my cabinets. So I went through every piece in every box (wasn’t that fun, not) and somehow, not a single cabinet had a scratch on it. The only damage at all that I found was a small dent on a piece of trim which won’t even be visible. I couldn’t believe it. It’s a shipping miracle!
In case you are curious, this is what we are using (I can’t remember if I’ve posted this link before):
https://www.rtacabinetstore.com/RTA-Kitchen-Cabinets/frosted-white-shaker-kitchen-cabinets/
@Mom22039 That is some nice tile.
It’s crazy how expensive tile can be, I had to abandon my favorite $75/sq ft backsplash tile because it was too expensive.
The Sonoma is really nice, I love tile that has color and pattern variations so no two pieces are the same. I’m more partial to the blue color though.
One last post tonight: They’ve starting digging out the foundation for the new foyer!
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/photos/32532343@N00/41749459801/in/dateposted-public/
Not sure what they are planning to do with all the dirt now piled on the driveway, though…
Re: Dirt
You may want to advertise on craigslist or nextdoor, free dirt to anyone who want to pick it up.
Why in the world are they digging so deep? Are you building a basement down there or something? Or maybe it’s some kind of frost issue I’m not familiar with. That is major compared to the 12” we have to go down for a poured slab.
Just set your filler for the absolute minimum opening required above the refrigerator. The ventilation is at the bottom of the frig but the hinges require some height above the door front
That is a full blown shipping mess. How could they mess those up so much? Good thing is those cabinets must have some kind of nuclear finish to not get scratched up, which is a good thing for a kitchen:)
Yes - along the front where new foundation is being poured you have to go down 4’ to get below the frost line.
Somewhere in the middle they have to pour a footing which will be used to support a beam which supports the middle of the new floor. That also has to be 4’ deep to get under the frost line.
And I guess the architect specified a crawl space, so there will be a 2-3" slab poured and an opening will be cut into the main part of the basement to provide access. Not sure if that’s a code issue or not, but that’s what he drew up.
That’s a major undertaking just to have a crawl space. My only guess is he needed that crawl space under the floor for sewer pipes that are going to be under some of that bathroom you are pushing out into the foyer area? Otherwise I cannot imagine why you need crawl space because I don’t think there is a big grade difference between old front door and new front door.
Thanks all for you helpful thoughts and ideas. @coralbrook thanks for reminding me we will have few guests in our bathroom! @notrichenough I’m very partial to blue, too. The MBR is Ralph Lauren Chambray/Denim in Workshirt Blue. I’m leaning toward a white/sage combo for the bathroom.
I found the (most expensive) marble tile in a smaller tile, so much less $. Since our quote on the large format was less than the web site price, I’m thinking this might be as well.
http://shop.newravenna.com/giovanni-barbieri-2x2-inch-timeworn-bianco-antico/
Would you switch from a large format tile?
@coralbrook The main floor is about 1.5 feet above ground level. Could they have filled it in and poured a slab? Or just left a very small space under the new floor? Maybe… it didn’t occur to me that that might be a possibility. I didn’t really question the architect about it, since he specified one I assumed it was the best solution. My builder didn’t say anything.
There won’t be any sewer pipes under there, there is an existing water line that goes through there to the garage that they are going to have to put back.
There are so many details to think of…when we built our home 25 years ago, we had owned 3 homes in two different states that all had blown pebble ceilings. My dad, a builder in a state far away always had smooth ceilings in his home construction projects. A detail H and I didn’t think of; we have had a few of the ceilings done smooth when we have had rooms repainted, but costly and messy. Many of our ceilings are very elevated, so we will leave as is. H can add crown molding as a retirement project. We will do other upgrades to get the home ready to sell when we want to move…which will depend on where kids are and appeal on living anywhere near them. Won’t downsize to stay here…if we stay here we will stay in the house. Another ‘detail’ we missed was thinking dollars per sq foot. We should have had architect have unfinished space above garage instead of pull down stairs storage…we gave up 400 sq ft. YIKES. That was a big one.
@notrichenough - I just remembered… We had the same fridge height dilemma, plus the width had to be just right (paneling on the side).
https://www.kitchenaid.com/shop/-[KRFC302ESS]-5569099/KRFC302ESS/
This is like what we got for our 72 inch fridge cubbyhole in House1. The local appliance store had a previous model that was almost a thousand cheaper. I would not touch LG or Samsung fridges with a long pole.
We built our home 25 years ago. Had the refrigerator spot large enough to accommodate. However island should have been a few inches further out, as the refrig replacement has a slide out drawer that I have difficulty getting out with limited swinging of the door (the pull handles on the island drawers stick out about 1/2 inch too far), and I might have put the cook top a different location on the island as you ‘bump butts’ with one nose in the refrigerator and one cooking… we do have the triangle with sink, cook top and refrig.
However our next refrig is going to be like what BB just posted in #1218.
Regarding master bath floor…is that small mosaic for the floor? If so, you are going to have a lot of grout that is hard to keep clean and nice. You are going to have to constantly seal that natural stone. And, the height variation between all the small tile and large grout lines is not going to be comfortable under bare feet. Also…I would be a little hesitant to put natural stone over radiant heat system, but I’m not an expert on radiant heat systems. Heck…I’m not an expert about any of this, just full of opinions.
I think if you look hard you can find a really good imitation that matches that creamy tumbled marble look for a lot less money. Splurge on the accent tiles