Picking tile is brutal. I hate it. There must be a million options…in a single showroom. I decided to focus on a nice simple tile scheme and to pick a simple affordable tile. I concentrated on the American Olean line, as they have a little bit of everything and they had a good display in the tile showroom. Fancy tile is $40/sq-ft. Tile at Home Depot is $2-3/sq-ft. It’s all the same material, basically. So, the trick (for me) was to find a mainstream tile that could be used in an elegant contemporary design.
For all the showers, I ended up with American Olean St. Germain in “Creme.” I used the 12″ x 24″ tiles laid up in brick pattern. Here it is being laid. I love it. It’s crisp, clean, and contemporary. It ran about $4.50/ sq-ft for the material. My tile guy is very high end…he charges about $12/sq-ft for installation. But, I didn’t want to mess around with quality on this.
American Olean St. Germain in Creme color in 1ftx2ft size.
For the 48 square feet of kitchen backsplash I splurged on hand-made tile from Heath Ceramics. The stuff is gorgeous. I figured that this was the place to put the beautiful hand-crafted material. When it’s installed, I’ll post photos.
Here’s the family room “bar” and backsplash. This is super cheap American Olean 3×6 “subway” tile in “biscuit.” For $3/square-foot I’m very happy with this tile. It looks great and goes up easy.
Family room bar and backsplash in American Olean 3x6 subway tile
Some shots of the completed spaces…
Kitchen wall with dishes in place.
One of the bathrooms. They're all pretty much the same.
Family room bar wall.
Tags: american olean, backsplash, heath ceramics, shower, tile
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