I’m all for tiny living but the toilet in the kitchen is crossing the line. Ewwww!
We are trying to pick our backsplash in the kitchen. We have narrowed it down to 3x12 subway tile and white, but can’t decide between white porcelain or white glass. Any experiences that people would want to share?
I love the look of glass but with our older house, we though the porcelain was more in keeping with the style. If you don’t have that constraint, I would go with glass.
@notrichenough , I’ve been catching up on this thread and I’m only up to 8/30, but I have to say I love your countertops and the understairs build. BUT I HOPE you are planning to put a hood that vents OUTDOORS above your range! It looks like it is the end of the house, so it would be very simple!
@emilybee , I prefer to be strictly ALONE in the bathroom, so I have no need for double sinks and separate toilet rooms. I find most separate toilet rooms claustrophobic and indeed like being in a portapotty. So at least one other person is on your side. B-)
I like glass, too, and I think it is a bit easier to maintain, although porcelain is very durable, too. Agree with monofsenior, glass has a more modern look, so make sure it matches the overall style. And ask the installer to use impermeable grout, or cleaning grout lines will be a chore.
Speaking of house sizes shrinking, it looks like even millionaires don’t want to spend $$ on maintenance of large mansions.
https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/pillsbury-mansion-destruction/
“Gustafson believes the cost to live in the mansion was the reason for its downfall. “These big mansions are kind of like white elephants: very pretty to look at but expensive to maintain,” he says.”
We have a butler’s pantry between the DR and K. In the storage room part, along with the glass door shelves, was a toilet. Yes, odd to the point of creepy. We had to decide if we wanted a first floor lav or the storage. Lav won. Pretty space.
When I watch Million Dollar Listing, they often have to come up with an angle, to overcome a deficiency. I suspect marketing that St Louis apt had to be very creative. Maybe the renter never cooks, just uses the fridge for beer.
@consolation Thanks. 
It’s sitting in a box in the living room. 
“And our master bath plumbing was supposed to be finished yesterday and the plumbers have been no shows two days in a row. My contractor has been good with communication but it’s not helping the project be completed any quicker. I’m ready to lose my mind with the delays.”
This is another reason why I love my contractor. All the tradesmen/women work for the company so I never have to deal with subcontractors no showing up.
“I prefer to be strictly ALONE in the bathroom, so I have no need for double sinks and separate toilet rooms. I find most separate toilet rooms claustrophobic and indeed like being in a portapotty. So at least one other person is on your side.”
^ 
I put in the big trough sink with two faucets so if we ever sell we won’t have to deal with people who whine about must having two sinks.
I have glass in my kitchen and I love it. Not subway style. I have opera glass.
I am one of those people who does not like to see a toilet in plain view in my bathroom. Not a decorative piece for sure no matter how artistically it is designed.
@notrichenough , so glad to hear it!
Well, we have embarked on two projects here, neither of them what I was planning to do first.
The un-fun one is extensive repairs to our free-standing garage/barn. The floorboards suddenly started deteriorating at the entrance earlier this year, and went fast developing into an actual hole that exposed the ends of a couple joists. So we had to fix that. So we got a bid from a guy to do that and fix a bunch of other rotting wood issues at the same time, and scrape and repaint it. There were double doors at the back that were rotting at the bottom, and suspect wood under that. As we all suspected, demo of outer rottenness revealed there was a stretch of rotted sill and some rotted floor joists in that area, no doubt due to many decades of moisture infiltration. Anyway, it is all getting fixed, and the guy we hired is great. Turns out he has a friend who is an excellent cabinetmaker based in NJ but looking to move back to Maine who is helping him. He’s a great guy, also. The first guy is looking to relocate his flock of chickens, because he’s going to have to move within a year, so he is bringing me a dozen of them to join my remaining 4 next week. (I told him I couldn’t take all 35!) I was able to give the second guy a good contact to a property manager in Brunswick, where he’d like to live. Ah, Maine!
Yesterday, now that I know what kind of work they do and how reliable/honest they are, I showed them the downstairs bathroom that urgently needs fixing, and he’s going to give me a bid.
On another front, the toilet in our one upstairs bathroom, which probably dates from the 40s or earlier, gave up the ghost a couple weeks ago. H tried to fix it, to no avail. I persuaded him that this was the time to just rip it out and replace it, and while we were at it replace the hideous vanity and the mirror and sconces for a quick and relatively inexpensive but significant cosmetic upgrade to the bathroom. (It helped that H had managed to break the glass on one of the hideous sconces and couldn’t find a replacement. B-) )
I found an actually responsive plumber, who came over to take a look and we developed a plan of action. When I have the new toilet, vanity, and faucets on site, he will come over and take out the old ones on a Monday. I will then repaint the beadboard wainscotting that runs all around the room, and as soon as I’m done he will come back and install the new stuff.
So, there are some constraints on my choices. The bathroom had the beadboard and an old clawfoot tub that I love, and this is a 100+ yr old house, so the style has to mesh. Secondly, since I don’t want to launch into major plumbing changes, there will be a single sink and the plumbing will continue to come up through the floor, not the wall. For installation fit reasons, have to have a 2-pc toilet.
That let out my original desire for an old-fashioned white china console sink. The vanity can’t have a bottom drawer, and it can’t have one of those open shelves. I wanted a gray/white marble top and white base. I didn’t want to spend a lot of $$. Anyway, this is what I ended up choosing:
I wanted nickel, but couldn’t get it in all the pieces, so I said the heck with it and went with chrome. I found that most of the faucets of this general style that I liked would not accommodate a counter top of the thickness specified on the vanity, so picked this one. I wanted Carrera marble for the top, but there wasn’t one at either HD or Wayfair that met my other specs so I settled on that point.
Now I have to decide what color to paint the beadboard. It is currently aqua–the former lady of the house had an obsession with shades of turquoise, but this one was, miraculously, pleasant. I’m thinking about some shade of white, with color easily added by painting the plaster wall above a color. The floor is real wood with a dark stain, like the rest of the house. I dislike imposing a color scheme that can’t be easily changed. But I am open to some other more adventurous choice…maybe. 
Thoughts?
PS I do not care about trendiness and I am NOT going to paint it gray! 
Very nice! I think it will go well with the style of your bathroom (as I imagine it). Does the shiny metal of the faucet match the metal of the hardware on your claw foot bath?
Beautiful!
Clearly, you missed the referrals to Laurel Bern’s site, (on another older thread,) where your mind can twist around 45 (at least) shades of cream. My brain relaxed when I unsubscribed.
Look at BM White Dove. Popular decorator color because it’s an interesting off white. It’s not a beach-y white. Looks good with white fixtures. If it’s too light on a test, you’ll know how much darker you want.
@BunsenBurner alas, the hardware on the clawfoot tub, a telephone shower kind of thing, is brass. Nice, real, non-shiny, non-lacquered brass. Now unavailable in faucets for under $1,500+.
@lookingforward Indeed, I am a Laurel Bern devotee, and I was just rereading some of her posts on bathroom colors, and very, very pale greys in particular. A very pale grey is a possibility. An off-white. Like Paper White. White Dove is a good idea. I have to go get some samples. I also am going to embark on painting all of the trim throughout the house, and I think I am thinking of switching from Linen White to Cotton Balls.
Regarding the issue of mixing metals in the bathroom, Laurel recommended nickel at one point, but chrome as a fall back IIRC.
BTW, anyone want to recommend some lighting? I need to replace the sconces and the overhead fixture.
Yes, she likes lots of greys.
I’ll also be repainting trim and doors but leaning to probably stay with White Dove. Against the yellow in the DR, a great pale cream look, great. Only issue is it’s slightly darker/greyer (noticeable to me, probably no one else) shade than the foyer walls (which wrap around to the 2nd floor.) I prefer trim lighter than walls. So we may very well end up repainting the walls. This is all nutso decision-making, with me. I try hard to resist. I have a test can of White Dove flat, which may do the trick, reflect light differently.
@BunsenBurner , the toilet in the bathroom where I am replacing stuff is immediately to the left of the door!. No getting around that, I’m afraid, without a REALLY major overhaul.
On the other hand, it does sit on a really nice piece of black slate with grooves to gather condensation in humid weather, great because of the wood floor.